Ask Lemmy

Billy Jean is not my lover

She's just a girl that thinks that I am the one

But

The chair is not my size

My wife was singing "Hello darkness, smile friend" until she met me. When I heard it I was like, "can you sing that back for me one more time?"

I don't know how long we laughed but it was equally funny the next day when we remembered it again.

Jeff Davis of Who's Line is it Anyway has a story about a friend of his mishearing "reach down, ease the seat back" in Van Halen's Panama as "reach down, ease the seed bag", as in adjusting his nuts. Always cracks me up when I think of that or hear the song

I thought the velvet underground "run run run" was

Run run run run run take your jacket too

Instead of "take a drag or two"

Good advice when it's cold out!

When I was a kid I heard The Go-Go's Our Lips Are Sealed as "Alex the seal".

Doesn't matter what they say

In the jealous games people play

Alex the seal

I thought it was about a sad bullied seal.

"Sharp dressed man" always heard it as "Shy best man" this may have had a minor counterproductive impact on my behavior when I was a teenager.

What have I become my Swedish friend?

I'm not sure this song ever made it out of Canada, but Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by Crash Test Dummies has a verse where a girl in school wouldn't change with the other girls, and when they made her, she had, in what I thought the lyric was, "burn marks all over her body". I assumed the song was about child abuse, and they were cigarette burns. The other verses are about a kid with a shock of white hair from "a car crash" and a kid who always has to come home right after school, so it kinda made sense in a consistent enough way...

Anyway, for basically my whole life I thought that's what the song was about. Turns out the lyrics are "birth marks all over her body", and the point of the song is more about kids being othered for things outside their control.

I still think I prefer my version...

FYi, these are called Mondegreens after a famous song that was mis-heard by pretty much everyone. I think it was Welsch.

Mine is England Dan and John Ford Coley's I'd really love to see you tonight.

Thought he sang, "I'm not talkin bout my linen."

Instead of, "I'm not talkin bout movin in "

Made up a whole story in my mind about how they met in a Laundromat.

Ever since I was a kid I thought in Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" he sang "on a stale horse I ride". I figured he had been riding his horse out in the desert a long time, it's all tired, no water.. yeah it's a stale horse. My partner will never let me live it down.

I love the Rolling Stones, but no one can understand a word Mick sings. I have alternate lyrics for all my favorite Stones songs - Gimme Shelter, Jumping Jack Flash, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women...

To this day I hear "Diarrhea Jane" instead of "Diary of Jane"

Chevelle - self destructor

*Go fight yourself" I somehow heard "go bite your tongue" Which is a form of suicide requiring extreme will. It made sense that the person in the song is so dead set they'd rather die than fail/admit they are wrong.

Say it Ain't So by Weezer

Instead of "Wrestle with Jimmy" I always hear "rustlin jimmies"

In the song "Coming Undone" by Korn I thought the line was "i fight my demons with my friends" which is kinda wholesome but its actually "I thought my demons were my friends" which is much sadder :(

Blinded by the light, revved up like a "douche" another runner in the night

Had no idea what they meant by that

I thought "Teen Spirit" was about Imitators and mashed potaters

Billy Talent's "Viking Death March" is a song about religious hypocrisy, capitalistic exploitation and doing something about it.

I initially understood the chorus as singing "crosses to bend, axes to fall" and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. The crosses in churches being torn down could fit with the axes, but you wouldn't bend them so much as break them. The only usage for bent crosses I could think of were Swastikas, but that also didn't quite seem to fit the rest of the song, nor the impression I had of the band.

Later, I figured out that it wasn't "bend", but "burn", which still didn't clear things up: Burning crosses also isn't exactly a leftist symbol, and following up "You preach about love and teach about faith, but all your beliefs are still rooted in hate" with a call to burn crosses just doesn't really track.

It's not a call to action. It's "Crosses still burn, axes still fall". It's calling attention to the fact that these hateful evils haven't disappeared.

People are Strange by the Doors "Streets are up when you're going down." I.E. "The whole world is happy when you're depressed."

George Thoroughgood's Bad to the Bone. Thought the line was "The head nurse spoke up. She said, leave us alone. " Instead of "Leave this one alone."

I thought, damn, that new born is gonna screw the head nurse. That IS bad to the bone!

You can tell by the way I use my wand, Im a woman-man no automaton.

Stayin Alive circa 2001 on my crappy boombox .

I... Didn't listen well to the flip in Valhallalelluja and misheard the whole rest of the song for like 6 years until I saw the videoclip. If you know, you know. I didn't even hear the word IKEA.

My family sings “More Than a Woman” as “Bald-Headed Woman” and when you hear it, it’s impossible to unhear it.

In the song "Edge of Seventeen" by Fleetwood Mac, the first line "Just like the white-winged dove", I misheard as "one-winged dove" for years

When I worked at a grocery store I always heard 'I hope you dance' as 'I want you dead'. The pa speakers were kinda shit and when the song eventually came up on radio on the drive home I was like "ooooooohhh!" out loud in the car by myself because I was wondering what it could possibly be since it was obviously not what I heard it as.

Love, I feel it in my hands, I can tell by the things I could do with another man.

I was embarrassingly old when I figured out nobody would be singing that in the 1970s and looked up the name of the song.