Media, Music, Radio

Dove Lotion #Pine?

62 Comments

Today’s post comes from Occasional Caroline.

For the last few days I’ve been listening to the 50s station on Sirius radio in the car. It keeps me safely cocooned from unprepared-for onslaughts of anything related to Trumpelstiltskin.

Today I realized that I’ve mis-heard the lyrics to Love Potion #9 all these years. I always thought he “took his troubles down to Madame RUE, you know, that gypsy with the GOLD TATTOO.” WRONG! He went to Madame RUTH, the gypsy with the GOLD CAPPED TOOTH! Clear as can be.

Is satellite radio that much better? Is my hearing improving in my old age? Have I achieved a zen-like state where the clutter of the everyday is swept away and only crystal clarity exists? Am I the only one whose been singing along wrong for decades?

This makes me question every song I’ve ever heard; who knows what other misconceptions I’m living under?

Have you ever mis-heard lyrics?

62 thoughts on “Dove Lotion #Pine?”

        2. There was a story in the news a few years back about the grade school teacher who asked her class to draw the manger scene of Jesus’ birth. When she looked at one drawing she noted a fat fellow dressed in red standing by the manger. She reprimanded the kid for putting Santa in the manger story. He explained, of course, that the fat guy came from the carol. It was Round John Virgin.

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  8. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I always heard songs with Moonbeams and Sunbeams as Moon Beans and Sun Beans. There was a Sunday school song that I used to croon,
    “I am a Sun Bean. Sun Bean. Jesus has a Sun Bean.” The image in my mind was Jesus carrying around beans.

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  10. Happy birthday wishes to tim. Hope your day is full of magic.

    There are so many song lyrics that I have miss-heard that I don’t even know where to start. Half of them are in Danish, however, and wouldn’t compute for you. I’ll be back if I think of something.

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  11. I had one as a kid that was a punctuation problem, not a case of mistaking the lyric. “Home on the Range” has that line: “Where never is heard a discouraging word.” For me it was: “Where ‘never’ is heard, (a discouraging word.)”

    It’s different, you know, like the panda bear that eats, shoots and leaves.

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      1. I could never understand why the Baptist Church had a whole hymn devoted to it in the Lutheran Hymnal (On the Banks the Baptists Cry) and why the Baptists were crying. Now I know that punctuation changes the whole meaning, and it should be Baptist’s Cry, as in John the Baptist.

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  12. From Bohemian Rhapsody: Scare a moose, scare a moose (Scaramouche, Scaramouche)
    From Hotel California: She’s got the Mercedes Benz (she’s got the Mercedes bends)
    From A Hard Days’ Night: Did not mis-hear, but could never quite figure out “but when I get home to you”.

    I am sure there are many other examples but can’t think of them right now and I gotta run…..

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  13. I could have forgotten my favorite little kid one, but fortunately my grandmothering skills kicked in at the time it occurred, and I tucked it away in a safe place for a time such as this.

    When my grandson was probably 3, the familiy was driving home from church on Palm Sunday and the little voice in the back seat started belting out “Martian little ducky, you’re carrying a Ford to inutian.” His mom asked him about it and he said it was a song they’d learned in Sunday school that day. We all pondered, but couldn’t decipher what it might be. At church on Easter Sunday my daugher tracked down the Sunday school teacher and asked her what the song from last week had been. It was “March on, little donkey, you’re carrying the Lord to Jerusalem”

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  14. What are you all doing up so early??

    There’s that line in the Pledge of Allegiance –
    And to the republic for Richard Stands…

    There was a cute little Sunday School song – “Praise him all ye little children, God is Love…” My mom tells me I would say “Got his glove.”

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  15. You can hear the right words and still get things wrong. As a kid I watched a bit of film running between feature movies. It was a PSA promoting efforts to fight polio, which was a BIG thing when I was a kid. In the film, Andy Williams sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to a kid in a wheelchair. I was livid. “Of course, he’ll never walk alone! The poor kid is CRIPPLED! He sure doesn’t need you to tell him that, you creep!”

    It might have helped if I had been raised with religious faith . . . .

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    1. Meant to add that I also thought it was Gold Tattoo. I know there’s another mis-heard lyric that I discovered while in the car – will try to dredge it up. I think my car stereo is just so much better than what I have in the house.

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    2. I went to work really early to take advantage of some quiet time before others showed up. I think tim just wanted to get his day started early.

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  17. Took me years to figure out that the Neal Diamond lyric “Reverend Bluejeans” was actually “forever in blue jeans.”

    And of course who can forget the classic lyric mixup. Someone did a parody on it on SNL or someplace. Michael Jackson’s “Bille Jean.”

    Lyric is” The kid is not my son.” But got skewered as “The chair is not my son.”

    Chris in O-town

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  18. OMG, I ALWAYS mis-hear lyrics — all the time and still do. The Seals & Crofts song, I always thought they sang “yellow dirt down in his toes” when I think the word is “soul” — I still don’t know. And the one mentioned above “one toe over the line” — never knew the word was “toke”.

    I’m sure there’s many, many more, but I never know the actual lyrics to songs so I’m blissfully unaware of any mistake on my part! 🙂

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      2. google – images – visit image – copy url – paste into comment. it works MOST of the time. sometimes (for reasons I don’t understand) you just get the link.

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  20. There’s a very popular song called “Uptown Funk”. It’s my very favorite to dance to for the last few months. A repeated refrain in it is; “Uptown, funk you walk, uptown funk you walk…..” For several months, as I sang along, I mistakenly heard, “Uptown, fuck you walk, uptown fuck you walk”. One time at my dance venue, I was loudly singing what I thought were the lyrics and another person next to me told me, “Uh – it’s FUNK”. Kinda embarrassing.

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    1. Yeah, having a dirty mind can get you in trouble. The Be Good Tanyas have a song called “The Littlest Birds.” A recurring line is “the littlest birds sing the sweetest.” I have always heard that as “the little-ass birds sing the sweetest.”

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  21. I do not mis-hear lyrics. For the most part I do not hear lyrics. I cannot track sound, meaning follow a line of sound and ignore other sounds. I often these days look up lyrics so I know what they are about. A big exception to this is some acoustic music, as in the LGMS. As a teenager. I would hear nther people singing rock song lyrics and would realize sometime what I thought were do-wap sounds were in fact words.

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  22. OT: Current word is that we will take the brunt of the storm. Our building meterologist, local TV weatherman, who is about the best forecaster I know, says 15 inches is quite likely.

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    2. One of the local schools canceled a big dance for this weekend, resulting in a slew of unneeded corsages and boutonnieres at the flower shop. Now it looks as if the storm will go south of us. Nobody’s fault, but one of those misfortunes that costs a small business money and effort.

      Hope it doesn’t cause too much mayhem for your community, Clyde.

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  23. When I was a kid I probably misheard a lot of lyrics – rock singers didn’t always enunciate very clearly. When I was a teenager they started putting lyrics on album covers, which cleared up a lot of confusion. The 70’s were the golden age of lyrics on album covers. I always knew the lyrics then.

    Now there are often lyric sheets in CD cases, but the print is tiny so I don’t always see them. So I’m back to wondering about lyrics again. Sometimes I look them up online.

    There was a Neko Case song I heard a couple of years ago, and I thought I heard her sing “Centipedes invade my thoughts,” and I assumed I must have misheard her. I looked it up later, and that’s what she said. “Centipedes invade my thoughts.” Whad’ya know.

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  24. Correction to earlier comment:

    The Beatles lyric in “A Hard Day’s Night” that I could not understand was “….so why on earth should I moan ’cause when I get you at home….”, NOT …”but when I get home to you…”. That part of the song was easy to understand.

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  26. Thanks, OC, for the link about Ed T. Doyle. He was one busy guy in 1897. If he never took any vacation time, he averaged about 16 inspections per week. In all kinds of weather, and before motor vehicles were available. Making sure St. Paul homes and businesses had running water and reliable plumbing. Here’s to Ed!

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