Mondegreen: Difference between revisions

m
revise quote template spacing
m (update links)
m (revise quote template spacing)
Line 35:
* The Vacant Lot comedy troupe has a skit dedicated to mondegreens in Springsteen's ''Blinded By The Light'': "ripped up douches"; "loofah sponges" and the "foreman of the night;" and one that's completely incomprehensible.
* Springsteen's ''Blinded By The Light'' was made fun of by comedian [[Louis CK]] who once commented
{{quote| ''You know that song 'Blinded by the Light'? Whenever it said 'revved up like a deuce' I always thought it said {{spoiler|'your mother's [[Country Matters|cunt]] smells like oranges'}}. Strange how that works...''}}
* Penn Jillette even joked about Paul McCartney's poor grammar in "Live and Let Die" ''in front of a UK audience'' in ''[[Penn & Teller]]: Fool Us''.
* In [[Ellen DeGeneres]]'s stand-up days, she discussed this.
{{quote| "Does he have it?" Is that what they're singing? "Does he have it?" Then you think to yourself "Why have I been singing 'Monkey hatchet?'" How many people have heard me sing "Monkey hatchet?" Then there are some songs that you don't even bother learning the words, because you assume that no one knows the words. That Aretha Franklin song "Respect," that's been around a long time, and we always get to that part where "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, ([[Beat]]) coch-C-T HO!"}}
 
 
Line 46:
** Sally was known for these kinds of blunders. In another Christmas strip, she recites: "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care/In hopes that Jack Nicklaus soon would be there."
* The Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" was mondegreen'd as "Chimpanzee for the Devil" in ''[[College Roomies from Hell]]'' (admittedly, by a character who's a [[Cloudcuckoolander]])
{{quote| '''Roger:''' [http://www.crfh.net/d/20050511.html Well, the coolness levels of that song just dropped 666%.]}}
* A ''[[Bloom County]]'' strip had Opus the penguin mangling ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' when he finds himself unable to remember the lyrics ("Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light / what so proudly we snailed, at, um, the starlight's last cleaning...").
* In the comic strip ''[[Wild Life]]'', Carson the Muskrat thinks the lyrics to his favorite U2 song are "I still haven't found Walter's cookie jar" (''I still haven't found what I'm looking for'')
Line 68:
* In ''Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs'' [[Dave Barry]] has an entire section on mondegreens. Ironically, it's in a different section that he awards the [[Department of Redundancy Department|"Certificate of Redundancy Certificate"]] to Paul McCartney and Wings for the line (from "Live and Let Die"), "But if this ever-changing world in which we live in..." not knowing that the actual line goes, "But if this ever-changing world in which we're livin'..."
* The children's novel ''In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson'' has the protagonist mangling the Pledge of Allegiance on her first day of school in the US:
{{quote| '''Shirley:''' I pledge a lesson to the frog of the United States of America. And to the wee puppet, for witches' hands, one Asian, in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all.}}
* The Lois Lowry novel ''All About Sam'' renders the Pledge of Allegiance as the Pled Jelly-Juntz. Justified as the protagonist is four years old.
* In the novel ''The Prisoner of Pineapple Place'', set in an invisible alley of invisible residents, the protagonist believes the words of the Pledge are "One nation, ''invisible'', with liberty and justice for all". The story suggests this might be an intentional [[Mondegreen]] on the teacher's part, given the residents' own invisibility.
Line 75:
* One of [[Beverly Cleary]]'s ''[[Ramona Quimby]]'' books had the titular protagonist thinking that the lyrics of ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' began "Oh say can you see, by the dawnzer's lee light" and becoming convinced that "dawnzer" must be another word for "lamp."
* John T. Sladek's novel ''The Müller-Fokker Effect'' (really!) has the following version of ''The Star-Spangled Banner'':
{{quote| Ofay can you pee<br />
By the dong's surly blight<br />
What you probably inhaled<br />
At the toilet's last cleaning. }}
* An in-universe mondegreen names the book ''[[Snot Stew]]'': it comes from the [[Cute Kitten|kitten protagonists]] mishearing the human children arguing: "Is not!" "Is too!" becomes "S'not!" "S'tew!"
* ''A Monk Swimming'' by Malachy McCourt (a memoir of growing up in Ireland and moving to America) uses a mondegreen from the prayer "Hail Mary" -- "blessed art thou amongst women".
* Novelization of ''[[Revenge of the Sith]]'' has this dialogue between Gunray and Anakin:
{{quote| '''Gunray:''' Palpatine promised to leave us in peace!<br />
'''Lord Vader:''' The transmission was garbled. He promised to leave you in ''pieces''. }}
* In ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' Crookedstar's Promise, barn cat Fleck thinks that the moonstone (a place where warriors communicate with their ancestors) is the foodstone. Prompts the hilarious line "Is there a foodstone as well as a moonstone?"
Line 91:
* The line ''Soy un perdedor''," from ''Loser'' by [[Beck]] was [[Lampshade Hanging|called out]] in a VH-1 special on the best songs of the 90s, where various musicians and critics sang what they thought Beck was saying instead of the Spanish line.
* "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly" was mondegreened in the television series ''[[V]]'' by none other than Robert "[[Nightmare On Elm Street|Freddy Krueger]]" Englund himself.
{{quote| '''Willie:''' Deck the halls with lousy folly/Fa la la la la, la la la la/Tis the evening scruffy molly/Fa la la la la, la la la la/Don't we know how gay a carol/Fa la la, la la la, la la la/Holy moly Yule Tide carol/Fa la la la la, la la...}}
* A butchering of "Hold me closer, tiny dancer" by [[Elton John]] is referenced in an episode of ''[[Friends]]'', wherein Phoebe is convinced that "Hold me close, young Tony Danza" is the actual line.
* Electric Light Orchestra's "Don't Bring Me Down" is referenced in VH-1's "I Love The 70s Volume 2." The made up word, groose is often mistaken for Bruce.
{{quote| "I just want to know who Bruce is."}}
* Greg from ''[[Dharma and Greg]]'' had a habit of this. "I want to Rock and Roll all night... And part of every day!" Dharma tries to correct him ("...Party every day"), and he drunkenly replies, "If you party every day, how can you get enough rest to Rock and Roll the next night?"
* [[Nirvana]]'s ''Smells Like Teen Spirit''. When MTV aired the music video, they subtitled lyrics into the video. (Unfortunately, even MTV got the lyrics wrong. It's no wonder why [[Weird Al]]'s parody pokes fun at the fact the lyrics are nigh-impossible to understand.)
Line 117:
* [[The Bangles]] included a cover of "Sweet and Tender Romance" on their 2011 album ''Sweetheart of the Sun''. Despite having found no official lyrics. Susanna Hoffs remarked, "We listened to the McKinley Sisters' recording over and over again, and could decode most of the words, but in the end we guessed a bit! What you hear on the record is actually our "scratch" vocals, and in fact Vicki and I are singing different words!"
* "Slow Uncle Walter/The fire engine guy" ("Smoke on the water/A fire in the sky", ''Smoke on the Water'' by [[Deep Purple]]). The Barenaked Ladies pay homage to this Mondegreen in their song "[[Tear Jerker|The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel]]":
{{quote| ''Rubberneck traffic and passers-by/ And Slow Motion Walter the fire engine guy / Stand around with their mouths open wide...''}}
* [[Electric Light Orchestra]]'s "Don't Bring Me Down", is frequently mondegreened as "Don't bring me down, Bruce!" The actual lyric is "Don't bring me down, groose", which is a made-up word. ELO realized so many people were hearing this that they actually started singing it live.
* Cover artists are divided as to whether the line in Elvis's ''Peace in the Valley'' is "the Lamb is the Light" or [[Sherlock Holmes|"the lamp is alight."]]
Line 128:
* "Wrapped up like a douche" ("Revved up like a deuce" (coupe) in the Manfred Mann's Earth Band version of [[Bruce Springsteen]]'s ''Blinded By The Light'')
* From [[That Other Wiki]], [[wikipedia:Mairzy Doats|Mairzy Doats]] is built of intentionally inverting this trope. For those not willing to go to the link here are the actual lyrics on the sheet:
{{quote| Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey<br />
A kiddley divey too, woooden shoo?<br />
(Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy<br />
A kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?) }}
* [[Stevie Nicks]] gives us an example of an [[Ascended Trope]]. The first time she met [[Tom Petty]]'s wife Jane, Jane said that she and Tom met "at the age of seventeen." However, her thick Southern accent made it sound like "Edge of Seventeen." Nicks liked the sound of it, and wrote a song around it.
Line 149:
== Web Original ==
* In [[Cracked]]'s article "[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-new-years-ruins-everything-great-about-drinking_p2/ 5 Reasons New Year's Ruins Everything Great About Drinking]", number 2 is "The Music", because nobody really knows the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne":
{{quote| Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never yab to bye, adaaa dada banana boat, and auld lang synnne.}}
* In the [[Riff Trax]] for ''[[New Moon]]'', the commentators joke that one of the songs on the soundtrack seems to say "Armed with your staring fly." The song is ''Roslyn'' by bon Iver and [[St. Vincent]] and the real words are "Aren't we just terrified?"
* This little bit from Snopes on [http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rafiki.asp an old Disney picture/audio book] certainly counts.