Question of the week: Do you suffer Lyricocis?
My pal Jeri comes up with all kinds of entertaining words. Here’s one — Lyricosis. That’s her word for the inability to correctly understand song lyrics. Here, she gives us an amusing anecdote:
> I’ve had multiple cases of it. I didn’t get one particular diagnosis and cure until this past summer, and the song came out in 1973, I believe. That’s a long time to be singing, Bruce Springsteen’s, “Hot Devil In The Freezer” while all along the correct lyrics were “10th Avenue Freeze Out.”
So, any of you all suffer from Lyricosis? Please, spill the embarrassing details. I’ll bet Wendy Maxey can drop a few on us.
February 9, 2009 - 7:16 PM
What??? How’d I get dragged into this??
Ok, ok…it’s true. I suck at lyrics. One of the worst ones for me? There was this zoo in Florida called the Dreher Park Zoo and every time I heard the commercial, I sang “Trailer Park Zoo.”
And the new Bruce Springsteen song “Queen of the Supermarket”? Yeah, I swear it says “queen of the silver monkeys.”
And that’s not even a dent.
Tad — There’s actually a book on the subject, a pretty funny one. It’s called Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics. Of course the most famous of all time is Louie Louie. You’ll be disappointed if you look up the actual words. Better to just believe what you think you hear.
Blinded by the light wrapped up like a ….
Since when is “deuce” pronounced with a “ch”?
Ironically written by Springsteen as well (which I didn’t know until about 4 seconds ago.)
Beat it, beat it, no one wants to beat it, feed it. Show ‘em who’s funky show ‘em your spite it doesn’t matter who starts the fight, just beat it.
Fo fee fy fee tso fy fo! That would be Chicago, “25 Or 6 To 4″
My daughter told me that when she was little, she thought the old Motown song “Everybody Plays the Fool” was “Everybody Plays with Pooh” (as in Winnie the Pooh)
Another friend of mine told me she thought the Pat Benetar song was “Hit Me With Your Pet Shark.”
Fire away.
Best I ever heard….For years my wife thought AC/DC’s song “Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap” were actually about the “Dirty jeans of the tundra chief”
How about as a kid, singing to AC/DCs Dirty Deeds………..Dirty deeds, thunder chief! Instead of dirty deeds done dirt cheap!
Eddie Money sang – “I’ve got two chickens to paralyze! Won’t you pack your bag of leaves tonight?!”
The chorus of The Clash song ‘Safe European Home’ always sounds like “save your pee at home” to me.
I didn’t think of this one but it’s always been one of my favorite misheard lyrics.
The chorus to The Rolling Stones song ‘Beast of Burden’ sounds like – “Never leave your pizza burnin’….”
The drummer in our band thinks Van Halen’s chorus of ‘I’m Hot for Teacher’ sounds like “I’m hot in a t-shirt.”
“Two chickens to paralyze!” I hope peta’s not reading this — I wouldn’t want them tossing fake blood at Eddie Money.
I’ll have to seek out “Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy …” I remember when I was a kid, a friend’s mom used to swear that’s what Hendrix was singing.
Here are just a few good ones from that book you guys mentioned:
Doobie Brothers:
Wrong lyric – Jesus is just a rat with beads
Right lyric – Jesus is just alright with me
Outkast:
Wrong lyric – Shake it like a pony-riding preacher
Right lyric – Shake it like a polaroid picture
(my favorite)
The Ramones:
Wrong lyric – I wanna piece of bacon
Right lyric – I wanna be sedated
Great topic! Or grade optic! It’s interesting that lyricosis is an affliction that usually goes undiagnosed for so long, and upon diagnosis can be cured immediately. I don’t know if we should make exceptions for intentionally cryptic lyrics like “I Am The Walrus”, or for vocalists with sometimes indecipherable deliveries (e.g. Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, Geddy Lee, etc.). One song in the otherwise forgettable bio-pic parody film “Walk Hard” was a pretty funny intentional faux-Dylan garble.
I guess the purest cases of lyricosis are highly individual to each listener; a musical Rohrshach test perhaps. I could probably remember lots of ones I’ve had, maybe including several different ABBA hits. Please folks, post ‘em if ya got ‘em!
Going offtopic a bit, we also have seen how the internet mercilessly exposes misunderstood words and phrases; an internet French benefit, as it were. It also reminds me of a sort of related thing, where one can endure dreary muzak by simply changing the pronouns for funny effect. For instance, take Diana Ross’ song “Touch Me In The Morning”:
“Touch her in the morning, then just walk away…”(!)
This also happens with names; and then there’s plain old mis-spoken things. The late longtime host of the local swing show on WVTF, Jim Cook, used to make hilarious spoonerisms all the time. So Gene Krupa might become “June Krupa” and June Christy might be “June Crispy”. More than once I heard him refer to World War Two era V-discs as “v-d discs”. And sometimes I use my childhood Mad magazine training to think of alternate celebrity names, like B-3 organist Joey Drinksafresca, or the TV actress (who once made a pop record called “Let’s Go Bang”) named Jennifer Loves To Do It. But then names like Elvis Presley and Oprah Winfrey aren’t too easy to get the first time you hear them. There was actaully a singer in the 1950′s who took the name Alice Lesley. Here’s a hint: never pay to see a show by Mary Chapin’s carpenter…
And the wind…cried…Jeri.
i am horrible with lyrics. like travis tritts song “trouble” and i thought he was saying i spilled tea all over me! hahaha