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No, I mean the lyrics are in English and I'm a native English speaker. I just can't always understand what the hell they are saying.

You're not the only one. There are countless songs where I have no idea what the hell they are saying without a transcript. A lot of singers don't enunciate very clearly and since the words are basically poetry they don't tend to have an easy to follow thread or context to figure out what is being said. Now I can still enjoy a piece of music even if I don't understand the lyrics but it is frustrating all the same sometimes. I'm always impressed by people who can follow the lyrics to songs that I find to be incomprehensible gibberish.

And there's even a long-standing website dedicated to "misheard lyrics":

http://www.kissthisguy.com/

So far there's only one reference to kissthisguy.com and it's about a particular mondegreen in a particular song. I think the summary does us all a disservice by not tying this site into the discussion. It's a site all about the topic.

I used to wonder why Sting would brag about his billiard skills (besides just his stalking) in "Every Breath You Take". "I'm a pool hall ace / with every breath you take".

Another long-time favorite in this way is "Benny and the Jets". In that case, though, it was hard to figure out in spots what Elton was singing at all. It turns out the most difficult section translates to "Get about as oiled as a diesel train".

Oh, and let's not forget this gem from Devo's "Whip it": "Tattoo detective" translates to "Try to detect it." Personally, though, I like my version better...

I thought the KGB was a dance school. Otherwise, why would Mary Chapin Carpenter have recommended that people find a two-step partner in the KGB?

"Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut."

Haha. I am pretty sure that word is "confidant", not "cosmonaut".

I think this is one for The Archive of Misheard Lyrics.

Being a KGB agent must be awfully boring these days.

Yeah, it seems that everyone in the KGB is already someone's 2-step partner by now.

It's even better if you *mis-remember* the quote/lyrics

Who knew that kissthisguy.com would become the #1 password dictionary.

that's exactly the kind of stuff I was talking about. You know what you *think* the lyrics are and once you add punctuation and some deliberate mistakes, even plain language crackers will have an awful time of it.

It's even better if you *mis-remember* the quote/lyrics

Who knew that kissthisguy.com would become the #1 password dictionary.

Ssh! Don't it give away! See you all at the Farm .... the password is 'mondegreen'.

I thought the lyric was "kiss the sky".

http://www.kissthisguy.com/jimi.php - I even listened to that line a few times and I can back up the slurring of the line on the studio version.

It's just an old wise tale

Old wive's tale.

I don't think he heard you. You'll have to wait until he's back from kissing this guy.

And I thought that America was the "Land of the Fee". Sorry, I must have misheard those lyrics :) http://www.kissthisguy.com/

Damn. Lost the link in all the /. server screwiness this morning: Here ya go, as originally written circa 3am:

Worse still, it will likely put this guy out of business, and that would be a cryin' shame.

When all lyrics are downloaded, and none have to be interpreted, something very important but likewise intangible about rock-n-roll is lost.

Tom Waits, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Woo Woo Woo.

http://kissthisguy.com/

Check it out. I think I saw the link here before, in fact. It is a great site, if a little difficult to navigate.

This site (obviously, perhaps) falls under fair use, but I wonder if the RIAA will put this on its list. I mean, the site has money generating ads and unlicensed excerpts of the real lyrics. I am sure the RIAA will ignore that 1) the bandwidth, hosting, et al needs to be paid for and 2) the RIAA is receiving FREE promotion of its wares.

How about this: lyrics sites respond by sending the RIAA invoices for promotional fees.

The Archive of Misheard Lyrics to the rescue.

"What else need be said?"

You might consider telling him to never try to dance to Red Barchetta, but if he does...
he should make absolutely sure that nobody is filming him.

PS: Caudron, you'd better not be late with this month's... er, installment.

After all, Outlook automatically corrects your spelling for you as you type.

For a while I was willing to attribute out of context words to spellchecker gliches, however that explanation fails to account for the ammount of mangled idiomatic expressions that I come across.

These expressions are often composed of simple, unambiguous words that should be spellcheck proof and yet a simple expression like 'off the top of my head' becomes 'off the top of my bread'. My explanation for this phenomenon is that these expressions are acquired during conversation and, like song lyrics, are often misheard.

It would seem to me that anyone who did even a minimal ammount of reading would soon realise that they had misheard an expression and correct themselves, and I think that this where the problem lies; people just don't read books anymore. (This point was brought home to me when two lifelong friends, who unfortunately are both CX0 drones, admitted to me that due to the pressures of work they couldn't remember the last time they read a book.)

In my opinion, courses in corporate writing (as mentioned in the article) are a waste of time unless they are accompanied by a reading habit. Constant exposure to 'well written' language is the only way to improve writing skills - hell, even a Louis L'Amour or Catherine Cookson potboiler novel uses idiom correctly.

My advice to Coroprate America - go read a book!

1. doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of a cubicle - getting up and looking at all the others... 2. personaly i'd like to see a borg cube(icle)... 'scuse me, while i

I think having a high-quality (if not technically CD quality) pre-ripped track, delivered by (normally) zippy servers with good bandwidth, and reasonable DRM is enough added-value to open the gap up again.

Until an iTMS purchased album comes with a lyric sheet, authoritative lyrics (as opposed to potentially misheard lyrics) are worth money to some people. Other people do not yet have a CD recorder. For them; the first CD purchased and recorded through this system would cost $10 for the recordings plus $50 for the CD recorder including shipping; amortizing this is left as an exercise.

We're #117!!!

Boomer sooner, boomer sooner, .... (this continues for a while) .... oku

I'll be sooner born, and sooner bred
and soon I'll be a sooner dead
rock'ahoma rock'ahoma rock'ahoma, oku
(or something like that! lol this may qualify for www.kissthisguy.com)

Even if there sole purpose is to stop the muppet next to you with a walkman singing "Whats a glove got to do with it"

The Archive of Misheard Lyrics: http://kissthisguy.com/, named after the line in Hendrix's Purple Sky...

Phil

This seems asinine to me. Don't free lyrics serve to enhance the listening experience?

Oh yes. Particularly when the singers mumble a whole lot and expect everyone to understand automatically =)

Maybe the music publishers think that lack of printed lyrics also enhances the listening experience, just the other way around, and probably more creatively too...

It's more fun if you sing the first line as
"Ozzy lost his mind". I'm also in agreement
with "Has he" over "Icy", I'm pretty sure.

Reader's Digest had an article once about
"satanic" rock music which had some interesting
interpretations of "Paranoid"; "thought you were
my friend" became "Oh, shoot out my brains!" and
"I tell you to enjoy life" was "I tell you to
end your life". Har har.

Ozzy is the man though. I'm staring at this keychain, there is a giant chicken skull above his head.

Song lyrics and movie lines get mis-understood all the time. Check here and here for two sites that host databases of misunderstood song lyrics. In fact, i forget what song it was... way back in the day, i heard about it on VH1... it was like the monkees or something, that the song was banned because someone put out an alternate set of lyrics that were less than tasteful (sex and drug related)... but the best part of it was that if you had these alternate lyrics in front of you, it does actually sound like they are saying it.

There's always The Archive of Misheard Lyrics. Not a reliable research source, but it sure is hilarious...