Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Ground Control to Major Tongue

Down through the years countless lyrics to pop songs have been misconstrued by listeners – two classic examples being Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising (There’s a bathroom on the right), and Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix (Excuse me while I kiss this guy). Go ahead – sing them out loud – nobody’s listening! (See player below.)

My own misconstruing (Is that even a word?) of lyrics started as a child of six or seven. I remember listening to my brother’s copy of The Beatles’ single, I Saw Her Standing There, and mistaking the line “and the way she looked was way beyond compare” as “and the way she looked was wavy on her hair.” Hearing me singing these lyrics out loud, my always compassionate older brother began to ridicule me mercilessly, repeatedly referring to me as a mentally challenged individual, although he didn’t use that term.

As a teenager I used to spend hours and hours listening to records, writing down the words to songs I liked, and then figuring out the chords so I could play the songs on my guitar. (Okay, so I was a lonely kid!) I can’t begin to count the number of times I heard a song and was unable to discern the lyrics. But I do remember trying to understand the words to David Bowie's Space Oddity and coming up with the line “Ground control to Major Tongue” instead of “Major Tom.” And I remember hearing the words to Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild and thinking the line was “Ah that’s funky lightening; every little thunder” instead of “I like smoke and lightning; heavy metal thunder.”

Now, to be honest, I don’t think substituting the words “every little thunder” for “heavy metal thunder” was all that big of a deal. But substituting “Major Tongue” for “Major Tom,” well, that’s a bit of a stretch, don’t ya think? Not to mention the fact that I’m pretty sure Major Tom wouldn’t be too thrilled with the new nickname!

I’m not sure what my favorite mistaken lyric is. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what the “warm smell of cold leaked gas” is that The Eagles are singing about in Hotel California.

What’s your favorite misconstrued lyric?