any new mondegreens?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 28 Jul 22 - 08:31 AM

Jim Seals, of happy memory, wrote and sang
"We May Never Pass This Way Again," as half of Seals and Crofts.

There is a later recording (2004-ish) in which his diction
makes Seals sound as though he were singing
We May Never Pass the Sway Again . . .

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 27 Jul 22 - 10:43 PM

Smedley - PM
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 10:19 AM

Thanks to Simon & Garfunkel's enunciation, as a kid I always thought the second line of Scarborough Fair was "Parsley, saydrels, merry and thyme".

For years I assumed saydrels and merry were obscure varieties of herb.


I always took it as
Parsley, Sage rows, Mary & Thyme

I rather like 'saydrel' though.

[now if I ever sing it I put the first syllables on the beat and make a point of taking a breath before 'rosemary']

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jul 22 - 09:26 AM

Also off topic but I recall an ad for Wives For Women that ended with "Call [number]. Leave mess."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 22 - 11:38 PM

Sorry. Senior moment, Mark. Yes, I meant Canterbury Tales. Duh.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 18 Jul 22 - 05:29 PM

Maybe more of a typo or predictive text at work here, but in an email I was copied into, one friend telling another that she would get more details with the next massage.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 18 Jul 22 - 04:55 PM

Canterbury Tales, surely?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jul 22 - 09:47 PM

In his version of “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, Willie Nelson sings “as the mirror told its tale”.
He obviously didn’t pick up on the original lyrics’ connection with Pilgrims Progress.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Jul 22 - 06:57 AM

Ok looking for songs about getting through hardship and I thought of I am a rock, which, unbeknownst to me, has this line about love:

It's laughter and it's loving I disdain

Which for the last oh 50+ years I have heard -and sung- as

It's laughter and it's nothing like disdain

Which I kinda like better.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Jun 22 - 02:03 AM

My daughter did not speak Spanish but she learned a line or two of Guantanamera:

Once in a meadow, oh, oh, oh, once in a meadow....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GerryM
Date: 31 May 22 - 09:33 PM

Whilst reporting a mondegreen, Stringsinger has fallen into a spoonerism. "Mei Bir" should be "Bei Mir". [and not to be confused with "My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer....]

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 May 22 - 12:18 PM

I would guess that "Guantamera" has been cited as "One Ton Tomato" in earlier posts.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 May 22 - 12:16 PM

The Yiddish popular song "Mei Bir Bist Du Schoen" was sometimes thought of by the musicians who played it as "The Bear Missed the Train".

Jerome Kern's lovely tune might be misconstrued as "The Song Issue".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jeri
Date: 28 May 22 - 08:00 PM

It's not a mondegreen, but it's popular. I heard a supposedly smart newscaster say something didn't "jive" with something else. "Jive is (amongst other things) a type of dance which some guy named Gordon Lightfoot used to hold the record for. Not THAT Gordon Lightfood, I'm sure, but maybe that's my folk cred.
It's "jibe".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 28 May 22 - 03:37 PM

As A geordie singer, I lived in Dover in the late 70s. I was delighted to find an excellent Shepherd Neame pub, the 'Malvern' in my own street, run by a Scottish couple and with a coal fire and a piano.

Myself & friends had many a good pub session there & I did of course act as a sort of missionary to these darkest parts of Kent & often sang the 'Blaydon Races' on a Saturday night (not all of it!).

Anyway, one night a local man was very complimentary and asked, in an East Kent accent, 'could yer sing that one yer did larst week?... you know the one about the bleedin' races'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 28 May 22 - 03:28 PM

A friend of mine was into Paddy Tunney about 30 years ago & I loaned her one of Paddy's LPs- 'The Wild Bees' Nest' I think.

One of the songs was 'The Green Fields of Canada' containing a line explaining why the Irish had left 'The lands are gone to rushes'

-next time I saw her, she said it was a lovely LP but could I explain why, in the 'Green Fields of Canada' all the lambs had gone to Russia......

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 22 - 05:06 PM

"I Just Can't Get Enough" by "Depeche Mode" was on TV this morning, as a tribute to the keyboard player who has just passed away. I remember hearing it played over a sound system in a supermarket last year, and for a moment thought he was singing "I Just Can't Get It Up" :)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 24 May 22 - 04:06 PM

More Seals & Crofts, a song titled "Today"
from the same album, Down Home.

I thought the lyric was:

In a beautiful ring heaven
And we were one
And all the world was
A beautiful place to be lost in


When in fact they wrote/sang:

Then a beautiful thing happened
And we were one
And all the world was
A beautiful face to be lost in

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 22 - 11:40 AM

Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream

I heard

"And guns and swords and unicorns
Were scattered on the ground."

rather than

"And guns and swords and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 Apr 22 - 10:24 AM

It's really easy to hear mondegreens in the Seals & Crofts song
"Purple Hand" from their "Down Home" LP,
the last one they recorded before they got a Warner Bros contract,
in the early 1970's.


I heard
"No mortal eye, no voice can hear this great clandestine plan"
which is nonsense, of course ... ought to be
"No mortal eye, no voice, no ear Escaped the destined plan ... "


THen in the second stanza:
I heard
"This is it, it ought to be the touch of hands abroad"
and it ought to have been
"This is it: Get off your knees, look what your hands have wrought"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 29 Dec 21 - 06:18 AM

Any Dylan fans ever wondered why Rosemary took a cabbage into town? (Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 28 Dec 21 - 11:41 PM

"O, Little Town of Battery Hen"

My Mum, now deceased, grew up on a large chook farm. No matter how hard I tried to convince her she would never watch the Aardman Animations movie Chicken Run. It brought back too many overwhelming childhood memories.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 28 Dec 21 - 08:40 PM

On a recent music Zoom, Pete Grassby misheard Bethlehem as "Battery Hen" during two verses of a carol. "O, Little Town of Battery Hen", anyone? C'mon, SOMEone's gotta write it, surely??

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Greum
Date: 27 Dec 21 - 03:03 PM

I Live Not Where I Love

"My heart Airfixed in your breast"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Dec 21 - 03:50 AM

How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees - "And you come to me in a submarine…"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 12 Dec 21 - 11:32 PM

I was just watching Episode 15, 2009 of Spicks and Specks, an Oz music/comedy quiz show. The Closed Captions showed not one but two mondegreens.

When a short excerpt of the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody was played the caption showed "Miss Miller" instead of "bismillah", and when a Prince song was mentioned it was captioned as "Raspberry Parade" and not "Raspberry Beret".

I can't tell you whether it was a human or a digital captioner, but in a music show it made it twice as funny.

I need the captions on that show because they all talk so fast and excitedly that I miss the answers to the quiz questions.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GerryM
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 01:36 AM

Olive Hillman Mondegreen has a web presence, https://prsfoundation.com/profiles/olive-hillman-mondegreen/

No relation to Olive, the other reindeer.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Anne Lister sans cookie
Date: 09 Dec 21 - 06:22 PM

In the Musicians Union magazine which arrived today I see there is an Olive Mondegreen listed as a musician. I suspect a nom de guerre.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 09 Dec 21 - 04:02 AM

I first heard it as "magic of your thighs".

Freud would have a field day!

Robin

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 21 - 09:31 PM

Re. Don Meixner’s post above.
I sang chicken slacks for years too, even though it didn’t make sense to me - then one day I got that light bulb moment.

Also, in the song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” I thought the line was “Can I believe the magic of your size”. The actual word is ‘sighs” - and there’s me thinking that ….. hmm ;-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Taconicus
Date: 08 Dec 21 - 09:12 PM

I'm not surprised that in the ballad "The Bonny Earl o' Moray" the lyric, "They hae ta'en the Earl o' Murray and laid him on the green" was often misheard and repeated as, "They hae ta'en the Earl o' Murray and Lady Mondegreen."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 08 Dec 21 - 02:05 PM

An interesting point about closed captions on TV: in Oz and maybe elsewhere the initial process is automated speech-to-text and then the human is there to pick up on errors and correct them, so machines can make mondegreens as well as humans.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 08:02 PM

I'm so tired
I just got hired
and it feels just like many times before

Not a mondegreen, but I heard this in my head out of nowhere.

You know Boebert and Gomert and Steve King and Marge Greene
Hitler and Himmler old nazis and Blitzkrieg
But do you recall
The most famous Nazi of all?
Donald the Red-Nosed Nazi
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it grows
All of the other Nazis
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Donald
Join in any Nazi games
Then one foggy 'lection night
Bannon came to say
"Donald, with your nose so bright
Won't you sleigh Clinton tonight?"
Then how the nazis loved him
As they shouted out with glee
"Donald the Red-Nosed Nazi
You'll go down in history"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 06:21 PM

Another Aussie classic mondegreen:

Manfred Mann - Blinded by the Light

I don't know how many people here in Oz heard the correct lyrics of that song from 1975.

If you say the words "wrapped up like a douche" everyone knows which song you are referring to.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 05:04 PM

I have been singing for years and have always felt I got them words right. Just recently, days ago actually, I learned that Sam Cooke wasn't singing about a guy dancing in Chicken Slacks but he was dancing with The Chick in Slacks.

Live and loin.

Don

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: cnd
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 04:52 PM

I used to know someone who swore emphatically that the words to "Walking In a Winter Wonderland" went: "Later on, we'll perspire As we sit by the fire" -- it makes sense semantically, but not much else.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 04:34 PM

good one, Helen, not having a TV, I missed it way back in August!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 03:06 PM

Hi Taconicus, I'm reopening this old mondegreen thread so that we can have a funny happy chat for Christmas.

My problem is that I can't understand - or remember - song lyrics and these days I set the closed captions on the TV so that I can "hear" what they are singing. Having said that, sometimes I see the funniest, laugh-out-loud things written on the captions. I'll try to remember some of the other most recent ones I've seen but this one made the news here in Australia:

'Ken Behrens'

To briefly explain, Canberra is our national capital and people who live there are referred to as Canberrans - pronounced Can'-berrans with the accent on the first syllable, often with a higher pitch on "Can" going down slightly in pitch for each of the next two syllables. (Another note, just to confuse you Canberra can be pronounce as Can'-berra, with the same accent and pitch as above or Can'-bra. The mondegreen doesn't work with the second pronunciation although even people who use the second pronunciation probably still say Can'-berrans. Confused? Never mind. Just have a laugh at the caption mistake and the resulting fun people have had from it.)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Nov 21 - 05:32 AM

Someone recently posted on a facebook thread that "she loved it from the button of her heart"!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 21 - 04:38 AM

Re. this verse of Paul Simon's fabulous song Graceland.

As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead

I keep hearing him sing that
last line as
"The way she brushed her hair and farted"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 12 Nov 21 - 09:00 AM

I think I've cured my tendency to Spoonerise the second line of The Next Market Day.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Nov 21 - 06:21 PM

Our Father who art in heaven
Harold be thy name...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Jones
Date: 11 Nov 21 - 04:07 PM

Listening today for the nth time to John Mayall's "Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton" album I suddenly realised that, in the song "Little Girl", he intends us to understand a comma before the last word of "I'm gonna give you a love child". I had always thought it a rather a bold lyric for 1965 or whenever it was.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 30 Mar 21 - 04:58 AM

Listening to Simon & Garfunkel "The Boxer" on Radio 2.
I must have been thinking of the numerous Zombie films as I'm sure I heard Seeking out the poorer quarters where the rabid people go

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Mar 21 - 04:09 PM

New Directions is pronounced just like Nude Erections

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: PHJim
Date: 18 Mar 21 - 07:11 PM

I'm not sure that this qualifies as a mondegreen, but -

The CTV Drama channel has a blue screen with a warning before many CSI type shows. If you don't read the screen, but just listen to the woman's voice reading the warning, it sounds like she's saying, "This program contains violence, coarse language, amateur subject matter."
If you read the screen, it says, "This program contains violence, coarse language, and mature subject matter."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Bill Turnpenny
Date: 16 Mar 21 - 11:21 AM

Dance, dance, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the damp settee.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Gealt
Date: 16 Mar 21 - 07:17 AM

We will be true to D till debt.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 02:29 PM

From "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild"
Pity mice implicitly

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jos
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 12:02 PM

Some years ago I had an Abbey National bank account. I decided to try telephone banking and was greeted with:
"You have reached Abbey National spanking service."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 11:30 AM

Got it in one, Nigel. Blessed art thou a monk swimming...