BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


The constructively misheard lyrics of your life, that while not perhaps exactly as the artist might have envisioned them still seem far more relevant to your life than anything they could normally come up with.

 
  

Page: 1(2)3

 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
23:56 / 24.05.04
filthy cute, however, is most definitely a phrase I'm gonna start using.

Although somebody at work the other day had me singing "Tonight... I Sellotape my glove to you"...

"You don't bring me flowers anymore, when you kung fu the door at the end of the day" is my all-time favourite.
 
 
Bed Head
23:58 / 24.05.04
*spits coffee all over computer screen*
 
 
Olulabelle
00:06 / 25.05.04
'Filthy cute' rocks. Can I have that?

'Tainted Love' for me was always 'Tate in Love' which isn't very interesting apart from the fact that I only discovered it wasn't about a year ago.

So that means I was singing it wrong for about 15 years.
 
 
pomegranate
01:52 / 25.05.04
as a kid, hearing huey lewis and the news' "hip to be square," i always thought it was "hit the bees square." had no idea what it meant.
 
 
Smoothly
09:55 / 25.05.04
On first hearing it, I thought Belle & Sebastian's A Space Boy Dreams was about a sensitive indie-kid disappearing up his own fundament:

I dreamt I had to go up my arse.
I'm always kidding on about going up my arse, for the day,
But faced with the reality of it, in a dream, I was terrified...
Etc.


I was very disappointed to learn that it's actually a far less interesting dream about going to sodding Mars.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
12:43 / 25.05.04
This chapter's going to be a close one
smoke rings I know you're going to blow one
all on a spaceship persevering
use my pants for everything but steering
 
 
40%
13:48 / 25.05.04
When I was young I used to think that the chorus to Smooth Criminal said "Eddie, are you walking?" rather than "Annie, are you okay?" and I thought it absurd that anyone should suggest otherwise.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
14:58 / 25.05.04
Michael Jackson's Beat It:

Don't water Meter boy, you water Meter Man,
Youd'd better get fluffed, better do what you can
So beat it, just beat it

Beat,it, beat it,
Norman wants to beat it, beat it
Show him how funky, show him upright
It doesn't matter
Hoops are alright
 
 
Jack Fear
14:45 / 31.05.04
There's a Church song called "Transient" that sums up the fleetingness of life and love with the couplet

lost, the world passes by
with the sound of a young girl's sigh


...the second line of which, thanks to Peter Koppes's thick Australian accent and generally mush-mouthed diction, I misheard for years as "with the scent of a young girl's thigh."

Which was evocative, if kinda icky.
 
 
waxy dan
17:27 / 31.05.04
Pixies:
If God's in Heaven,
then man's alive,
and if man's alive,
then the devil's exists
 
 
Mazarine
18:02 / 31.05.04
"Sixteen, clumsy and shy, I went to London and died."

-Morrissey

It just seemed such a summary biography, of course, it kept going after that, so I guess it wasn't that brief.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
18:48 / 31.05.04
Always thought 'Debaser' (Pixies) went

"SHAKE, and I'll lose ya"

at the chorus, but actually it's a reference to that Dali film 'Un chien andalou' (I think)
 
 
Cato.the.Elder
19:50 / 31.05.04
My sister says she never dreams at night
there are days when I know why;
those possibilities within her sight,
with no way of coming true.
Some things just don't get through
into this world , although they try.


from Rosemary, by Suzanne Vega
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
14:15 / 01.06.04
"Sixteen, clumsy and shy, I went to London and died."


That's not it?
 
 
phrankphutta
16:15 / 01.06.04
Tool's "Aenima":

I thought
"Fuck smiley gladhands with hidden agendas"
was
"Fuck smiling bladders who play thier Nintendos"

I knew it was wrong, and didn't make any sense, but damned if I still don't sing it that way.
 
 
Cat Chant
13:10 / 30.07.04
I just remembered the other day about M/A/R/R/S' tribute to East Anglia:

Pump up the volume
Pump up the volume
Pump up the voume
Diss! Diss!


It used to cheer me on train trips to see friends at UEA.
 
 
Benny the Ball
13:16 / 30.07.04
Chuck a Car, Chuck a Car, Chuck a car everybody, every body chuck a car...

In my defence I had a hearing problem due to an infection from swimming too much as a child
 
 
Pingle!Pop
18:07 / 31.07.04
It's such a small thing, but the difference between:

Oh, do you believe in love there? (Suede's The Drowners) and my own mishearing, Oh, so you believe in love, then? always seemed to make the song even more cool, due to the implied disdain for the idea of "love", and disappointment at discovering someone's naivete in believing in it. (This isn't, in fact, relevant to my life, but I did think it made the song just that little bit cooler...)
 
 
Alex's Grandma
22:35 / 03.08.04
Verse:

I can barely control my anger
I don't understand
But it looks like, goddamnit
They just don't understand

And no one understands me anyway either

The shitheads !


Chorus: ROLLINS ! ROLLINS ! ROLLINS !

Middle eight: " I sometimes wonder why I go to the gym so often.

Oh god, it's so guache - Man, I SO need a facial !

Chorus: Repeat for a bit,

AND THEN, " Henry, you should have been an estate agent. "
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
11:51 / 04.08.04
Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" sounded much better to me when I misheard it as "Climb Every Woman"...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:21 / 09.08.04
And of course, who could forget that masterpiece of South-Western Rastafarianism...

yes, it's Bob Marley's EXETER!!! Movement of Jah people...
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
09:25 / 16.08.04
Nobody know's it, but you've got a secret bread
and it's crying only for me


Semisonic
 
 
Ganesh
16:18 / 16.08.04
Singing along, on Saturday, to Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy The Silence':

Pleasure's reaming
Soldiers burping...
 
 
Grey Area
16:29 / 16.08.04
A very loud poolside argument erupted between a friend and myself about whether David Gray was singing "Let go your heart, let go your head, and failing that" or "Let go your heart, let go your head, and feel it now". Both work. One's right. I got chucked in the pool. Happy days.
 
 
Ganesh
16:34 / 16.08.04
Then there's Sister Sledge's classic

We're making love in a Femidom....
 
 
Ria
00:11 / 17.08.04
"Leave the Capitol" by the Fall blurred into "Leave the cat alone!"
 
 
Ganesh
20:36 / 04.09.04
Hearing Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's 'Islands in the Stream' today, I was reminded that, for years, I misheard the chorus as

Islands in the stream
That is what we are
No one in-between
How can we be wrong?
Sail away with me to another world
and we'll rely on turnips, uh-huh


I had a cosy mental image of Kenny 'n' Dawlee living an idyllic, swede-dependent existence on a root vegetable-covered desert island. In, erm, a stream.
 
 
Isalie
11:49 / 05.09.04
Getting back to Filthycute, I first heard this guy singing
"My salvation lies in your mouth" to this really shmaltzy sounding country pop song. Aong with the music, it just seemed to sum up the whole getting-dirty-with-someeone-you're-all-lovey-dovey-with nicely for me.

When I heard the song on better speakers the next day, I was kinda bummed to hear he actually said "in your love".

Any chance someone can tell me what that song was by the way?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
11:24 / 21.11.04

" In your white dress and your wedding bells,
You look the picture of contented blue whales "

Listening to it this morning, I was struck by the above pastoral image in The Bitterest Pill by The Jam.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
19:45 / 21.11.04
I can't listen to Green Day's American Idiot without hearing the lead singer express his lack of desire to take a job in New Media.
 
 
Liger Null
20:53 / 21.11.04
From Moby's Natural Blues:

Oooooh Lordy now, travelled so hard
Don't nobody know my troubles with God
 
 
rising and revolving
21:04 / 21.11.04
Faith No Mores Midlife Crisis I though for ages was

"Your blood forgets it's true,
But without me, you're only you"

Which made a kind of weird twisted sense. And I always though Elvis' "Return to Sender" was referring to a place called "Sender" to which he wished to return...
 
 
Baz Auckland
21:21 / 21.11.04
Until very recently I thought the opening lines to Roxy Music's "4HB" was:

"Oh I was moved by your squeendring"

(it's "Screen Dream" apparently... which makes more sense I guess... I always wondered how one 'squeendered')
 
 
JOY NO WRY
23:19 / 21.11.04
"Who scared you,
and why were you born?"

From 'Who scared you" by the Doors, became

"Blue skinned Indian,
why were you born?"
 
 
Sekhmet
15:23 / 22.11.04
I used to be horrible with this when I was younger, before my vocabulary expanded enough to encompass all the music I was exposed to...

***
Hush, Hush
Keep it down now
This is scary

***
I'm a joker, I'm a smoker
I'm a red hot poker

***
Blinded by the light
Wrapped up like a douche
A mother-roller in the night

***
And, courtesy of my dad, who used to sing it this way - ZZ Topp's "La Grange":

Kareem Abdul Jabar
Stole my new car
Now the radiator's leakin'

(A how how how)
 
  

Page: 1(2)3

 
  
Add Your Reply