“Just Let Me Staple the Vicar” and Other Hilarious Mondegreens We’ve All Sung

I’m going to take a wild guess and estimate a third of the American population has no idea what a mondegreen is, although I’d venture to say virtually everyone in the U.S. has encountered one or two.

According to Merriam-Webster, a mondegreen is “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung.”

The phenomenon – indeed, the word itself – originated with Sylvia Wright, from her November 1954 story published in Harper’s in which she related how she misheard the lyrics of a Scottish folksong as a child. The song in question, “The Bonny Earl of Morray,” featured the line, “Oh, they have slain the Earl o’ Morray and laid him on the green.” Having misinterpreted the lyric, Wright understood it to be, “Oh, they have slain the Earl o’ Morray and Lady Mondegreen.”

This makes perfect sense, because kids will often attempt to make sense of what they hear based on what’s familiar to them. One friend’s children, having no frame of reference as to what a jukebox is, interpreted the line in Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock & Roll” as “put another dime in the juice box, baby.”

When I was a kid in 1973, I was sure Paul Simon was begging his mother not to take his “coat and comb” away instead of his “Kodachrome.”

Across musicdom, as long as there’s been popular music, misheard lyrics have abounded. How many times have you wondered why Jimi Hendrix sang, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy?” No need to claim you were amidst your own personal purple haze; we’ve all heard it that way.

And who hasn’t – deliberately or not – sung “there’s a bathroom on the right” instead of the actual lyric, “there’s a bad moon on the rise”? Although, arguably, it might just as well have been “there’s a baboon on the rice.”

Anyone who’s ever listened to Derek and the Dominos’ rock classic “Layla” has surely pondered Clapton’s horribly mumbled first line. A radio colleague said he’d always heard it as, “What do you do with milk and coffee?” I think the actual line goes something like “What will you do when you get lonely?” I prefer his version – and just between you and me, I still sing it that way.

When Kansas’ song “Carry On Wayward Son” first came out, this same colleague thought the line “Lay your weary head to rest” was about some tired guy, coincidentally named Layo Weary, who had to sit down for a moment: Layo Weary had to rest.

On my way to work one morning, I nearly drove off the road laughing when I misheard a line from the Rolling Stones’ “Waiting on a Friend” as “don’t need a purging priest” (instead of the actual “virgin priest”).

An impromptu internet search this afternoon turned up such errant gems as “Hit Me with Your Pet Shark,” “Paint the Bag Brighter” (instead of “Paperback Writer”), “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” and this fabulous misheard ’60s Dylan anthem: “the ants are my friends, they’re blowin’ in the wind.”

One friend mistook Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” as “Lovin’ the Alligator.” This same friend tells of the time she was in a car filled with teens from her church youth group and a Mr. Mister song came on. When the chorus came around, she belted out, “Give Me a Laser Gun,” having no inkling the group was singing “Kyrie Eleison.”

The first line of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” sounds remarkably like “She was a fax machine.”

The chorus of “I’m a Believer” has been misheard as, “Then I saw her face, now I’m gonna leave her.”

Then there’s this misheard line from “Africa” by Toto: “There’s nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do”; the actual words are “a hundred men or more.”

And admit it, in “Rocket Man” by Elton John… you never knew what he was singing at the end of the chorus, did you? I know I didn’t. Fortunately, this 2012 Volkswagen commercial clears it all up. Now you know. You’re welcome.

This article from the New Yorker explains the phenomenon of the mondegreen, and even discusses something known as the McGurk effect, in which – devoid of appropriate context – listeners may be persuaded to hear one consonant sound instead of another.

Examples of the McGurk effect run rampant through this hilarious video from Peter Kay. I won’t spoil it for you; suffice to say I’ll never hear “We Are Family” the same way again. Same goes for Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”

You can even buy books of misheard lyrics. Years ago this book by Gavin Edwards amused me endlessly. Unfortunately, in the three ensuing household moves, it’s disappeared, so I’ve recently had to replace it. One misheard lyric I recall from that book is from the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” and it goes a little something like this: “Well, since you put me down, there’ve been owls puking in my bed.” Hard to forget a line like that, eh? I’ll leave it to you to track down what the lyric really is ’cause I can’t bear to disappoint you with reality when the mondegreen is so much fun to sing!

Okay, fess up, what are some classic song lyrics you’ve misheard?

About the Author:
Rita M. Reali is an international award-winning author and longtime editor who most enjoys editing memoir, general fiction and romance, along with inspirational writing. She’s self-published four novels: Glimpse of Emerald, Diagnosis: Love, The Unintended Hero and Second Chances – the first four in the seven-volume Sheldon Family Saga. Her fifth novel, Tender Mercies, comes out in June. As a former disc jockey in her native Connecticut, Rita used to spend her days “talking to people who weren’t there” – a skill which transferred perfectly to her being an author. Now she talks to characters who aren’t there on “a little chunk of heaven in rural Tennessee.” Contact Rita.