And who was Suzanne Flanzimay, you ask?
Well, among thousands of petty crimes, she killed James Taylor’s girlfriend.
Well, at least I thought she did. When I was but a wee tot, my mother lurved Fire and Rain, particularly John Denver’s cover of the song. And being the precocious little fella that I was, I used to sing it to her to cheer her up, and my mom needed a lot of cheering up when I was a kid.
Never mind how such a melancholy song can actually cheer someone up, but I suspect Mom liked hearing a three-year-old hilariously mangle the lyrics:
Just yesterday morning, they wet me know you were gone.
Suzanne Fwanzimay put an end to youuuu…
Suzanne Flanzimay was the surrogate for Notme, Sumbody and Idunno whenever something went wrong at my house:
“Who ate all your father’s salted peanuts?!”
Beats me, but it fits Suzanne Flanzimay’s MO.
“How did this wad of gum get in your sister’s hair?”
I recall seeing Suzanne chewing an entire pack of Wrigley’s not ten minutes ago, Mom.
“Who went into my purse and ate an entire value pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint???”
See previous answer.
“WHICH ONE OF YOU IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THROWING ELEVEN POODLE PUPPIES IN THE TOILET????”
Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I bet Suzanne Flanzimay wanted to give them a bath. Hence, the shampoo bottle and several hairbrushes thrown in there, too. But in her defense, she thought you’d be pleased, Mom.
When I was eleven or so, while learning to play acoustic guitar, I found the lyrics to Fire and Rain. Much to my chagrin, I learned that Suzanne Flanzimay was not the master criminal I thought she was.
Well, you can imagine my disappointment; yet another piece of childhood innocence dashed upon the harsh rocks of reality, lying there beside the bleached wrecks of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the belief that professional wrestling is real.
Flash forward thirty-odd years to present day, and I’m noodling around on the Intarwebz, downloading a song or two. On a lark, I Googled the lyrics to one of them, and discovered that, while the chick Manfred Mann was singing about may have indeed been blinded by the light, she was definitely not “wrapped up like a douche.”
I had hopes that she was, you know, what with little Early Pearly offering rides in his curly-wurly and all the calliopes crashing to the ground. Manfred Mann songs are the lyrical equivalent of Jabberwocky. Personally, I think “wrapped up like a douche” dovetails nicely with the rest of the lyrics, and if you could thow in a frumious Bandersnatch and a few slithy toves gyreing and gimbling in the wabe, well that’d be just peachy, too.
Any of y’all have other tragically misunderstood song lyrics you’d like to share?
That's okay, until I read the lyrics I would have sworn the line was Little Early Pearly gave my anus curly wurly and asked me if I needed a ride.
I always wondered how they got that past the censors.
Yes, I know. I'm not quite right in the head.
Very happy to know I'm not the only one who thought it was"wraped up lie a douche" I just reacently figured it out and still tend to think the wrong words
I never could figure out why John Fogerty was saying:
Don't go out tonight-
It's bound to take your life.
There's a bathroom on the right.
Maybe he was concerned about my bladder health?
And it was recently a friend of mine told me that for the longest time he thought that Led Zeppelin was anti-semetic. Really! Listen to the end of Stairway to Heaven:
"And if you listen very hard
The Jew will bother you a lot."
I still think that "One Ton Tomato" sounds better than "Guantanamera".
And I'll take my brother's warbled version of "Simian Angel" over "Send Me An Angel".
This is too much. My eyes are watering so hard I can't see. My all-time favorite has to be the Rolling Stones' "I'll Never Leave Your Pizza Burnin'".
The Pussycat Dolls have a song I used to hear on the radio a lot, "When I Grow Up". One of the lines of the chorus was, according to my ear (and likely my preference for a certain portion of the female anatomy):
When I grow up
I wanna see the world
drive nice cars
I wanna have boobies
Actual word is 'groupies', but until I looked it up, I was a little disturbed by that.
When I was a kid I used to argue with my mom that the lyric was "every time you go away you take a piece of MEAT with you."
When I was a teenager, I used to sing along with Nirvana's "Come as You Are:" "And I SMELL and I don't have a GOD…"
Billy Joel's Big Shot, I thought was :
"You had to be a big shot, ninja
All your friends were so knocked out"
Well, it kinda made sense
For years and years I heard Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U as
“I went to the doctor n’guess what he told me
Guess what he told me
He said girl you better try to have fall in love
No matter what you do”
and not
"He said girl you better try to have fun
No matter what you do”
No idea how I turned a one syllable three letter word into three one syllable words. But I always thought it was awesome that it was awkward and didn't really fit in there because it shows how she’s breaking down and can’t get a clear sentence out, which all of us do sometimes when we are very emotional and or stressed out. Which to me, fits what is going on here in the song. Except that I was wrong, so umm…yeah. Nevermind.
Linkin Park, 'Papercut':
'I feel the light betray me'
Morphed into:
'I feel like I'm Dick Cheney!'
Three of us heard it that way and we were ALL staring at each other in confusion. 'He feels like our Vice President?' (this was back pre-Zero days).
Alanis Morrisette always sang about the "cross-eyed bear" that she gave to me!
I loved hearing my daughter warble along with This is the Guardian of the Angel's Aquarium…
Guess it was a Sixth Dimension?
(never shoulda made her listen to oldies.)
For those younger than dirt, It's the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
In her defense, she was only 9 at the time!
Lil' Nana
Heh Heh.
My friend always though Thompson Twins "Hold Me Now" was:
Hold me now…oh, oh, wash my car.
[Hold Me Now, Warm My Heart]
There's plenty of songs now-a-days that I just shake my head and think…what I'm hearing CAN'T be what they are singing, can it?
Guy my dad worked with – his little boy was singing the Kenny Rogers song "Lucille" and thought it was "You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille – four hungry children, a-crappin in the field."
My daughter thought Black Betty was a sheep. Perfectly logical really. After all, "Black Betty had a child" and "that thing gone wild, BAM THE LAMB".
Black Betty's child went feral and had to be shot; why else would anyone Bam a Lamb? This, obviously, made Black Betty a sheep.
Like I said, perfectly logical.
My ex-husband, when we were in high school, was overheard singing AC/DC: "Dirty deeds and the Thunder Chief" — which of course spawned a nickname that he still carries. Imagine a stadium full of football fans chanting "Thunder Chief! Thunder Chief!" and having no idea where it'd come from…
In margaritaville, I thought that the words " so drunk he couldn't find the door" were "so drunk he could find the floor". For all of my college years, and many years thereafter, I thought that Jimmy Buffett was beyond brilliant not only for his music, but because he had truly defined "drunk." Imagine my surprise when I mentioned it to a friend, only to find out it wasn't floor, but door. I think Jimmy should change the lyrics. I mean if you are so drunk you can't find the floor, then damn, you are drunk!!!
A friend of mine sang Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" as "ten devils in tree sap". I laughed so hard I cried.
I always thought it was Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you. IIRC His friends were planning to surprise him JT with her being at a concert and the plane crashed.
there is that fat holy guy "Round John Virgin" (with his mother and child)
And just so you know that this is not a new phenomenon, mom used to sing "O spee spees and barley grow" (Should be "Oats, Peas, Beans, and barley…") and that was in the twenties.
…Always sort of wondered at the plight of the guy in the 80's who was "livin' for Audrey, lovin' for Ramona"….also, felt a little left out when I heard that "only the lonely get laid" ("Reverend blue jeans" and the "one winged dove" were issues for me as well). Thanks for the humor–wow, I needed that!
The word you're looking for is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
j
My dad thought Hank Williams was singing about "Jambalai, horsemeat pie, file Gumbo.
(Jamabalai, crawfish pie, file gumbo.), and my brother thought it was "There's Mr. Abby, the tower car man" in England Swings.
And who can forget the moving Christmas Caro, "Oh, lit up town I bet me ham", or the hymn, "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear"?
There are a couple of books on the subject, including "He's Got the Whole World in His Pants"
The kids in chapel at my Episcopal school sang "Amazing Grapes" … with the line "that saved a wrench like me"
Chiming in late here, but only because I seem to be the only one who misheard the lyrics for Greased Lightening…
I've got shoes,
their both a flyin'
and I'm losing control
unfortunately I told this to my friends when I was a pre-teen, and never lived it down.
And to anonymous, I also mishear the England Dan & John Ford Coley song "I'm not talking about the linen"
Well, in all fairness to Manfred Mann, Blinded by the Light, (and Spirit in the Night, (same album)) WERE Bruce Springsteen songs. (Originally released on
Greetings from Asbury Park)
And I sometimes think Mr. Springsteen has left a few reality connections behind…
Hey, AD. I thought it was "Suzanne D'Flanzimay". Thanks for a funny post. Some of these comments had me howling with laughter!