When we were little, my family used to take road trips to the Cape almost every weekend in the summer. During those trips, which seemed like they took days, my dad would always pop in a tape to listen to, most likely to drown out the kids in the backseat yelling “stop touching me!” The tape I remember most vividly was of the musical “Hair.” On the album, there is a song called “Sodomy.” I imagine my mother must have been none too pleased with this musical selection. But more horrifying still, all three little kids in the back of the wood-paneled station wagon would sing all the words. Not the REAL words, mind you. But the words we thought they were saying. After all, none of us knew what the hell “karma sutra” was at the time. We just thought “comma soup (ah)” was a rare delicacy.

Misheard lyrics can be hilarious. When I was a little older the song “Super Freak” was the rage:

She’s a very kinky girl

Once you get her off the street, ow girl

Blueberry!

No, Rick James didn’t shout out an order for his favorite anti-oxidant snack. It turns out that he actually yells, “Blow Danny.” Possibly in reference to the sax solo immediately following and the sax player’s name being Danny. However, at the time I was sure he was talking about the fruit. It’s not surprising, I didn’t even know what the song was about at all. I thought a super freak was someone who danced really crazy.

Here’s another. Neil Diamond sang this in his song “Forever in Blue Jeans”:

Honey’s sweet

Forever in blue jeans

But, my friend Georgia thought he was singing about a totally cool man of God in “Reverend in Blue Jeans.”

And in the 80’s, the band Survivor sang a song called “High on You.” The real words:

There you stood,

To look so good and feel so right
But my dad thought they were singing about a dominating woman, lovingly referred to as “battle teacher.”

There are endless stories of these misheard lyrics. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they make no sense. The following video is an entirely misheard version of the Pearl Jam song, “Yellow Ledbetter,” which itself sounds like it could be misheard. What the frig is a ledbetter?