The most misheard lyrics of all time
Admit it. We’ve all been guilty of singing the wrong line to a song at some point in our lives. When you find out the true words to a track that you’ve been incorrectly belting out for years, it can feel deeply wrong to accept the real lyrics, and organically, you blissfully continue to live in denial.
Surprisingly, scientists, including Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, have looked into this phenomenon. In 2009, Ma carried out a study into it and tried to scientifically explain why we all regularly accidentally sing the wrong words to our favourite songs.
“Understanding speech can be difficult, especially when it’s noisy,” Ma told NBC after her study was released by the Public Library of Science. “We found that this process can be helped a lot by looking at the speaker’s face. If you have only sound information, you will sometimes make mistakes. But if you also have the visual information, the brain will combine those two pieces and get a better sense of what’s being said.”
She added: “We hear some (expressions) more often than others. And we often hear about bathrooms, or we’ll ask about a bathroom at a restaurant and be told that it’s on the right. That’s something we’ve heard many times. It’s much less common to hear a sentence like ‘There’s a bad moon on the rise.’ The brain will combine what it hears — the sounds — with those prior beliefs, those expectations. If the sound is not very reliable, than the prior beliefs will have more effect.”
Below are a series of classic songs that music lovers commonly mishear.
Six songs with commonly misheard lyrics:
Jimi Hendrix – ‘Purple Haze’
‘Purple Haze‘ is one of Jimi Hendrix’s most definitive tracks, but many have been singing it wrong all this time. In the song, Hendrix sings, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky,” however, it’s commonly been misinterpreted as, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”, which gives ‘Purple Haze’ a completely new meaning.
Hendrix played a role in the song being misconstrued by listeners because he delivered the lyrics in a muffled tone, which is slightly incoherent. Furthermore, he occasionally sang the commonly misheard lyric during live concerts while pointing to one of his bandmates, which helped it gain traction.
ABBA – ‘Dancing Queen’
If you go to the dancefloor of any British wedding, you’ll find somebody incorrectly singing ‘Dancing Queen’ to ABBA. The most common lyric people get wrong is the line, “See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen,” which is often falsely sung, “See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen.”
Remarkably, that’s not the only frequently misunderstood line from ‘Dancing Queen’. However, the other is much more farcical and hard to understand. Some have sung, “Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tangerine,” rather than, “Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine”.
Dire Straits – ‘Money For Nothing’
Mark Knopfler wrote Dire Straits’ hit ‘Money For Nothing’ while in a New York department store after hearing a conversation between two delivery men who were watching MTV rather than work. Much of the song’s lyrics, including the problematic f-word slur which Knopfler repeatedly sings, were quotes by the two delivery men.
One line from the song seems to stump fans, which is commonly wrongly conceived as being “Money for nothin’ and chips for free” rather than the true lyric, “Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free”. According to a study by Starkey Hearing Technologies, it’s the most commonly misheard lyric by the British public.
Queen – ‘We Will Rock You’
‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen is officially the catchiest song of all time, according to a study published by St. Andrews University in Scotland. Still, plenty of people have been incorrectly singing it for all these years. Although Freddie Mercury sings, “Kicking your can all over the place,” some have strangely misunderstood it as “Kicking your cat all over the place”.
Brian May told Mojo magazine in 2008 that he wrote the song because he wanted to “create a song that the audience could participate in.” However, the guitarist didn’t envisage that many would get the lyrics wrong and believe the song was promoting violence against felines.
Nirvana – ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is a grunge anthem for the ages, which epitomises the early 1990s. Thanks to the birth of MTV, Nirvana gained mainstream success which was unexpected and parachuted them into superstardom from their previous cult-like status. Kurt Cobain once said of the song: “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.”
On the chorus, some believe Cobain sang, “Here we are now, in containers”, rather than the actual line, “Here we are now, entertain us,” which also makes much more sense.
Eurythmics – ‘Sweet Dreams’
In 1983, Eurythmics dominated the chart with ‘Sweet Dreams’, which became a humongous hit for the duo in the United States and on their home turf, establishing them as an act. To date, the track has sold millions of copies worldwide. Hilariously, some believe Annie Lennon sang, “Sweet dreams are made of cheese” instead of “Sweet dreams are made of this”.
Dave Stewart talked about the song’s lasting appeal with SongFacts: “When the DJ puts that on, there’s always a lot of hands in the air. But it’s actually a very sort of existential, spooky record asking if this is what the world has come to. Is this what our dreams are made of? And then some people want to use you, some want to abuse you. So it goes into a topic that could go massive if you want it to. Eurythmics songs always had a bit of that in it, a juxtaposition between the music and the lyric.”
