Mis-heard lyrics

[Alpo]

You ever feel dumb, when you been singing a song for years and years, and then find out you've been singing the wrong words?

 

There's a sea chanty. All For Me Grog. Chorus goes

 

All for me grog

Me jolly jolly grog

All gone for beer and tobacco

For I spent up all me tin

On molasses drink and gin

And across the Western Ocean I must wander

 

That made perfect sense to me. Rum is made from sugarcane. Molasses is made from sugarcane. Yankee sea captains would pick up a load of molasses in the West Indies and take it back to New England and sell it to the distilleries, who would make rum with it. So molasses drink made perfect sense as another name for rum.

 

I've been singing that song for more than 20 years. This morning I'm reading a short story that was written in 1931. A sailor is about to be Shanghaied. He's leading up against the lamppost, drunk, singing to himself.

 

Well I spent up all me tin

On the lasses, drinking gin

And across the Western Ocean I must wander.

 

Huh. So I look up the lyrics to that chanty. And he's not imbibing molasses drink. He's hanging out with the lasses, drinking.

 

Oh well. Could be worse. I could think there was a bathroom on the right. Or maybe say Bella Bella, even say Wonder bar. Oh them mis-heard lyrics.

[Cypress Sun]

Blinded By The Light (Manfred Mann) is probably the song with the most mis-heard lyric (notice lyric is not plural) of any song.

[DocWard]

You know the old saying (g-rated for publication), "I spent most of my money on women and ale. The rest I just wasted."

 

I'm OK if there's a bathroom on the right, so long as you don't say " 'scuse me while I kiss this guy..."

1 minute ago, Cypress Sun said:

Blinded By The Light (Manfred Mann) is probably the song with the most mis-heard lyric (notice lyric is not plural) of any song.

 

Never could figure out how to wrap up a...  Uh... Nevermind...

[Rye Miles #13621]

Louie Louie has to be #1

 

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/2479544

[Warden Callaway]

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

54 minutes ago, Alpo said:

You ever feel dumb, when you been singing a song for years and years, and then find out you've been singing the wrong words?

 

There's a sea chanty. All For Me Grog. Chorus goes

 

All for me grog

Me jolly jolly grog

All gone for beer and tobacco

For I spent up all me tin

On molasses drink and gin

And across the Western Ocean I must wander

 

That made perfect sense to me. Rum is made from sugarcane. Molasses is made from sugarcane. Yankee sea captains would pick up a load of molasses in the West Indies and take it back to New England and sell it to the distilleries, who would make rum with it. So molasses drink made perfect sense as another name for rum.

 

I've been singing that song for more than 20 years. This morning I'm reading a short story that was written in 1931. A sailor is about to be Shanghaied. He's leading up against the lamppost, drunk, singing to himself.

 

Well I spent up all me tin

On the lasses, drinking gin

And across the Western Ocean I must wander.

 

Huh. So I look up the lyrics to that chanty. And he's not imbibing molasses drink. He's hanging out with the lasses, drinking.

 

Oh well. Could be worse. I could think there was a bathroom on the right. Or maybe say Bella Bella, even say Wonder bar. Oh them mis-heard lyrics.

 

 

It might could be that you first heard and learned a different version.  By their nature chanties, like folk songs, tend to have several versions, all equally correct.  

[Pat Riot]

I have made lyrical mistakes. Blinded by the Light was one. Neither version makes a damn bit of sense. Mine or theirs. 

[Alpo]

30 minutes ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

 

It might could be that you first heard and learned a different version.  By their nature chanties, like folk songs, tend to have several versions, all equally correct.  

That's a very good theory, and I like it. However, this is the album that I learned it from.

 

 

And knowing what the lyric is supposed to be, it is quite obvious they are saying, "on the lasses, drinkin' gin", not "on molasses drink and gin".

 

 

I learned many a seafaring song from Dramtreo - a bar band in Chesapeake, back in the early 90s. One of my favorites was Maui. And when the internet came along I found there were lots of versions of Maui that did not agree with the one I learned. There's a great chanty called Paddy Lay Back. And again, the versions you find on YouTube are not the version I learned.

 

It was then I made up me mind to leave her

I get a job, and spend me life ashore.

So I jumped overboard and swam ashore boys

And in the English bar I found a whore

Paddy lay back, take in the slack

Take a turn around the capstan, heave a pawl

About ship's stations boys be handy

We're bound for Valparaiso round the horn

[Subdeacon Joe]

2 minutes ago, Alpo said:

That's a very good theory, and I like it. However, this is the album that I learned it from.

 

 

And knowing what the lyric is supposed to be, it is quite obvious they are saying, "on the lasses, drinkin' gin", not "on molasses drink and gin".

 

Ah!  It would be interesting to get a folk musicologist to do some research into it.

[DocWard]

2 hours ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Louie Louie has to be #1

 

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/2479544

 

I don't know if they qualify as misheard or flat-out not understandable. They are the only ones I am aware of to have spawned an FBI investigation, though.

https://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/403623915/louie-louie-indecipherable-or-indecent-an-fbi-investigation

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

Gone away is the blue bird

here to stay is a new bird

he sings a love song

as we go along

walking 'round in women's underwear

[Rye Miles #13621]

3 hours ago, DocWard said:

 

I don't know if they qualify as misheard or flat-out not understandable. They are the only ones I am aware of to have spawned an FBI investigation, though.

https://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/403623915/louie-louie-indecipherable-or-indecent-an-fbi-investigation

Thanks for posting that. I remember the controversy very well. I played in a couple different bands that did that song. It was popular still in the early 70’s in the bar scene. We had fun with the lyrics when we played it!

[Alpo]

Set yourself on fire

Just like Richard Pryor, cocaine

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

 

 

 ..... I'm not sure but,

 

"it's a long way to the shop

  if you want a sausage roll" ........   

[Dirty Dan Dawkins]

There’s that CCR song “There’s a bathroom on the right”

 

And Pearl Jam’s “Butter Man”

 

[bgavin]

We had to look up "kissing the captain's daughter" to see what it meant.
I always figgered it was "Yes, I kissed the captain's daughter, now I've trouble passing water..."  but that was a different bar song.

[Irish Pat]

She’s a brick owl!

[Alpo]

25 minutes ago, bgavin said:

We had to look up "kissing the captain's daughter" to see what it meant

I have heard of "kissing the gunner's daughter". So following your advice, I looked up "kissing the captain's daughter". I found several hits referencing a romance novel, but nothing else.

 

In the chanty "drunken sailor", there's a verse saying to "put him in the bunk with the captain's daughter". Er-lie in the morn-ning. But nothing about kissing.

[Sarge]

Secret Asian Man aka Secret Agent Man

[bgavin]

It was explained to me that kissing the captain's daughter is getting flogged at the main mast.

[Doc Shapiro]

5 hours ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Thanks for posting that. I remember the controversy very well. I played in a couple different bands that did that song. It was popular still in the early 70’s in the bar scene. We had fun with the lyrics when we played it!

 

It was a regular for us in the late 80's in the event band I was in.  Still have a hard time believing I made more then than I make now.  Ah well.

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

This is what I heard, way back when this song was a chart topper. 
 

 

[Sixgun Sheridan]

Everyone thinks she's a spaz

she's got Bette Davis eyes

[Utah Bob #35998]

On 9/11/2022 at 8:58 AM, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Louie Louie has to be #1

 

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/2479544

[Dusty Devil Dale]

Not musical lyrics, but I confess I was a Junior in high school before I realized the Pledge was not:

" One nation under God, in the window sill".

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

49 minutes ago, Dusty Devil Dale said:

Not musical lyrics, but I confess I was a Junior in high school before I realized the Pledge was not:

" One nation under God, in the window sill".

I had to ask my grandfather the meaning of “for widget stands”.

[DocWard]

On 9/11/2022 at 10:55 PM, Abilene Slim SASS 81783 said:

This is what I heard, way back when this song was a chart topper. 
 

 

 

I laughed so hard I had tears rolling. Thanks, I needed that this morning.

[Alpo]

CCR is not as bad as Joe Cocker, but still - what I heard and (what it actually is).

 

It came out of the sky, landed just a little south of N'Ohleans (actually it landed south of Moline Illinois, not New Orleans Louisiana)

Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn't b'lieve what he seen

Laid on the ground ashakin', fearin' for his life

Then he ran all the way to town screamin' "it came out of the sky!"

 

Well a crowd gathered around and the scientist said it was Marsh gas

Spiro came to make a speech about raising the Mars tax

The Vatican said "whoa, the Lord has come"

Hollywood rushed out an epic film

Ronnie the cop, you know he said it was a communist plot (I used to wonder who Ronnie the cop was. Apparently that was "Ronnie the popular said it was a communist plot". I never heard him referred to as Ronnie the popular, but supposedly that was Reagan)

 

Well the newspapers came and made Jody a national hero

Walter and Eric said they'd put him on the network TV show

The White House said he could sing in the Blue Room (I wondered why he would be singing. The actual lyric is that the White House said "to put the thing in the Blue Room")

The Vatican said no, it belongs in Rome

Jody said it's mine but you can have it for 17 million

[Yul Lose]

Rode across the desert on horse with no legs——America. That’s what I thought they were singing until my wife told me what it real was about 2 years ago.

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

Lucy in disguise with diamonds

[Rip Snorter]

Not lyrics, but to my Baby Sister it was "Hail Mary full of grapes..."

[Bart Slade]

Another not lyrics, but my brother always used to quote Spock as saying "Live long and perspire"

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Louie Louie was a classic for “what are the words?”