I stopped by to see Audrey and John at the Lacey house and the first thing I heard was, "Mom, I heard The Zit Song today!" I, of course, have no idea what she is talking about. So she repeats it - and then John translates.
Evidently the song is "If This Is It" by Huey Lewis (released 1983) but sounds to John like "Is this a zit?" Go ahead, find a copy and listen to it!!
Well, that got me going on a hunt when I got home. I distinctly remember thinking a song had a verse "at the glass of water time", but for the life of me, I cannot hum the melody or remember much. I know when I hear it on the radio, I still think those are the words and I don't know what the real words are. So I hunt and hunt, but instead of finding my answer, I learned there is actually a word for this phenomenon: Mondegreen.
Mondegreen was coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954. When younger, she had heard the folk song words as "They had slain the Earl of Moray / And Lady Mondegreen". She didn't realize her mistake for years but found out later it was really "They had slain the Earl of Moray / And laid him on the green." She was kind of sad that this heroine she had made up in her mind was not real at all.
There is a whole following of Mondegreens. There was actually an article in The Washington Post on June 12th by Paul Farhi "Another somebody sang somebody's song wrong". Thought that was a catchy title. He says something that is so true. Back (in the day), the only way to figure out the lyrics was to buy the album. Remember albums? "But really, why would anyone want to do that? Why would anyone bother to tamper with one's golden, screwed-up, misheard lyrics?"
There are books on the subject; Gavin Edwards wrote three! He tells of his first mondegreen as a six year old learning "Row, Row Your Boat". He was certain the line after "merrily merrily merrily" was "Life's a butter dream".
Jon Carroll, a columnists says "Remember that touching moment in "I'm in the Mood for Love" when the singer reveals his favorite nickname for his beloved? I'm in the mood for love, Simply because you're near me, Funny Butt, when you're near me.."
Some other examples:
"The ants are my friends/They're blowin' in the wind" ("The answer my friend/Is blowing' in the wind"-Bob Dylan)
"Sweet dreams are made of cheese" ("Sweet dreams are made of this"-Eurythmics)
"There's a bathroom on the right" ("There's a bad moon on the rise - Creedence Clearwater Revival)
What about you? Do you have any??
2 comments:
Derek loves Enrique Eglasias. One of the lines in his song goes "you can run, you can hide but you can't escape my love". On a long trip to Montana about 3 yrs ago, he had his head phones on listening to that song probably 50 times. He was singing out loud his version... "you can run, you can hide but you can't escape my LOAN". We cracked up everytime he sang that line. To this day, I believe he still thinks his song version is correct.
Don't know the title or artist but my sister corrected my singing of the line "With the birds in the shed it's a lonely view"("With the birds I share this-a lonely view"). I'm also way off with the Take Me Out to the Ballgame song "I don't care if I never come back!" Not to be outdone, Ben faithfully belts out wrong Christmas carol lyrics.
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