They call them mondegreens, and being the kind of person who thinks about language a lot and listens to music even more, they’re kind of a recurring theme in my life. Years ago, in my long-lost radio days, a friend and I spent a particularly dull afternoon disagreeing vehemently on what Springsteen meant when he wrote “wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night.” (Len was absolutely wrong, by the way, as the lyrics clearly say “Held up like a loofah by the foreman of the night.”) Recently, while returning from the grocery store and listening to me sing along to Sirius XM, the child wanted to know what Sting meant when he sang “Now I know my local purple song”, leading to today’s misheard lyrical query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is still waiting for Harold Angel to sing, asking: What are the funniest Mondegreens you’ve ever run into?
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You know, it’s like Elton John once said, “sometimes you find a hamster in disguise.”