Thursday 10 September 2009

The most frequently misheard lyrics - but I never heard them as such

Recently I discovered on the BBC a list of the most frequently misheard lyrics in music.

They included:
  1. the Police: "you make the best of what's still around" is misheard as "you make the best homemade stew around" from "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around"
  2. the Bee Gees: "it's alright, it's okay, you may look the other way" is misheard as "it's alright, it's okay, you make love the other way" from "Staying Alive".
  • There is also the familiar:
  • "the girl with colitis goes by" for "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes"
  • "a year has passed since I broke my nose" for "a year has passed since I wrote my note" from the Police's "Message in a Bottle"
  • "you're gonna be the one at Sainsbury's" for "you're gonna be the one that saved me" from Oasis' "Wonderwall"
  • "will you do the banned tango?" for "will you do the Fandango?" from "Bohemian Rhapsody"
The strange thing is that as a child I never made these common mistake, but I did hear as a eight-year old "message in a parcel" instead of "message in a bottle" and from "Bohemian Rhapsody" I heard "the alley puss has a devil put aside for me" instead of "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me"!

I have never really though how I came to hear all these lyrics on the radio when a boy, and why these errors that so many people submit never came to me whilst others nobody seems to know did for years and years.

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