Kids Hear the Darndest Things

It's always interesting to hear a child's take on lyrics. My daughter was once singing what I thought was "Go Tell It on the Mountain," except she was singing "Go selling on the mountain."
In my case, I heard the lyrics to Prince (the artist formerly known as Prince?  the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince?) song "Little Red Corvette" wrongly when I was younger.  Many decades have passed, and I now know better, but there are times when I still have to remind myself that Prince is singing, "little red Corvette," NOT "limited collect".  I seriously have no idea from where that came.

Literary Reminders

I have to admit it: I like Nickelback--inasmuch as I like any band.  I'm more of a like-the-songs kind of person rather than the band.  The exceptions to that are Barenaked Ladies, The Kingston Trio, and Lost and Found.  Pretty much anything those three play are OK in my book.  Anyway. . .
The breakout song for Nickelback was the song "How You Remind Me."  It was written as a breakup song, but whatever. It has some pretty good lyrics: Only a Canadian band could rhyme "sorry" with "story".  It does have a few "what'd you say?" moments.  The beginning of lines don't always come out clearly, but what's a few first person subjective pronouns among friends?  And I was certain it was a sarcastic "yes" before the "no no".  Turns out it was a repeated "yet" from the line "Are we having fun yet".
That said, the biggest confusion on my part is where the lyrics have a literary allusion.
It must have been so bad
'Cause Little Women must have d**n near killed you.
It's kind of a low blow, when you think about it: it's as if they are saying "you're so sensitive you can't even handle reading Little Women".
It turns out that this time I'm mistaken. (See what I did there?)  It is not "Little Women"; the words are actually "living with him".  According to Louder, this line is a reference to living with the lead singer of the band.  Okay, that makes a little more sense.
So, are we having fun yet?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no--no.

Love is a Gamble

I may have come of age (that is to say, I graduated from high school) in the early '90s, but the soundtrack of my era was the '80s.  The radio stations that now play " '80s, '90s, and today" back then played music from the 1970s and 1980s.  Now when I listen to the '80s station on satellite radio, I realize how much of the music really infiltrated my younger years. 
I had to explain to my children the concept of 1980's power ballads after they observed me laughing through "Lost in the Woods" in the movie Frozen 2.  They couldn't understand just what was so funny.
One power ballad I recall listening to had one of those confused lyrics that a ten-year-old me pondered.  At the time I liked songs, not bands, per se; however, I liked Starship's three #1 songs: "We Built This City"; "Sara"; and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now".  The song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" often made me realize that lyrics aren't always what they sound like.
This song that was featured in the movie Mannequin (a rather strange movie that actually has a sequel!) begins with the line "Looking in your eyes I see a paradise". The way the singer pronounces the word "paradise" always made me think he was saying "pair a dice".  I knew there was no way he could look into a person's eyes and see dice (although it does give a hilarious meaning to "snake eyes". . .Voldemort, perhaps?  "Nothing's Going to Stop Us Now" the Death Eater version? Harry Potter and the Starship--Ahem, I digress. . .); therefore, the word had to be "paradise".
Little did I realize my mistaken lyrics would resurface.  Recently I have been reading books by author Francine Rivers, and her book Redeeming Love has a Gold Rush town in 1850s California named--you guessed it--"Pair-a-Dice"!  With the name of the town, it is a clear pun with so many men taking a gamble on finding paradise in gold, and finding a wilderness of lawlessness.  There is an actual city of Paradise, California, in the Gold Rush area.  The town was supposedly named after a saloon called "Pair o Dice", but there is little evidence for that.
I still listen to the " '80s, '90s, and today" radio stations, and I do like the music from the turn of the century as well as from my childhood. This gives me more opportunities to find more confusing lyrics.

Well, Kids, This is Where We Are

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

**There's not much more I can say at this point.**

Huh? What was that?

When I was a child, my siblings and I participated in our Sunday school's Christmas Eve program.  We had to memorize a line (Bible passage or other) and then recite it.  My father would always encourage us to e-nun-ci-ate.  He would say it slowly and distinctly to emphasize the point.
To this end, I adjure singers everywhere to enunciate and help prevent confusion.
One song I point out would be "Soak Up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow.  Where was her Communist friend hold meetings?  I assumed it was his office.  Turns out, not so much.

Darn it, Leroy!

Installment #2 of Misunderheard Lyrics:
I was intending to bring up my second new direction, but have decided to stick with my first.  I'm also hoping it will be trending.  As if. . .
My dad was big on "culturing up" his children.  By this, he meant playing a variety of his 45s.  Those are records, by the way--big pieces of plastic that contained music. ;-)  My sister and I would dance (okay, run in circles) around the living room to such classics and "Guitarzan" and "Time in a Bottle."  I knew of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its sinking before I was even familiar with Great Lakes ships.  
One song my dad liked to play was "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown."  I liked the part about Leroy having a razor in his shoe.  I couldn't figure out how the handle wouldn't stick out and why he didn't get cut, but whatever.  I also couldn't figure out how Leroy was from the south side of Chicago, but was "the baddest man in the whole downtown".  I mean, the south side wasn't downtown after all.  But we all know "the downtown ladies called him tree-top lover," so perhaps he just hung around downtown.
It wasn't until I was in 7th or 8th grade that I learned of my lyrical error.  My teacher was telling our class how the author of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" never wanted his mother to hear the song because there was a bad word in it.  In my naivete, I tried my hardest to find out where exactly that bad word was.  I had been hearing the song for years, and there was no bad word in it, was there?
Finally, it was revealed to me that Leroy Brown was not "the baddest man in the whole downtown."  He was "the baddest man in the whole d**n town."  Now, in fairness, I at such a young age, was not exactly familiar with swear words, so my young mind obviously interpreted the lyrics with a word I did know.  
I have inherited my father's collections of 45s, along with the rest of his records.  I am in the process of "culturing up" my children.  I don't like to play them "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" too much: Not because of the word which I now know is not down; rather, my husband is always quick to point out the misguided error of my youth.

Around the World and Back Again--No, Just back again.

So here I am, back from a MAJOR hiatus.  Life got in the way of blogging, but now, as we speak, the whole world seems to have been sent to our rooms because somebody coughed.  
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make light of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the need to quarantine.  It's just that if we don't laugh, we'll go crazy.
I have come back with a new outlook--no, not really--but have decided to blog in another direction.  More thoughtful and insightful.  Okay, not so much. 
One topic I have decided to cover insightfully is something near and dear to my heart.  Music.
So today, I am introducing Misunderheard Lyrics.
I shall begin with my earliest memory of a misunderstood lyric.
I remember singing the Star Spangled Banner with gusto as a child.  There was just one thing about it that confused me:  What the heck kind of light is donzerly?
Apparently I was thinking of Donner and Blitzen or something, but I definitely did not hear the words as "dawn's early".  
To this day, I have to mentally correct myself while singing the song and remember there is no donzerly light; just early morning.

So, there you have it: Lyric number one.
Tune (see what I did there?) in for more crazy lyrics and other profound thoughts.