Song lyrics

[karen2205]

Mishearing lyrics

I've been listening to a song accompanying an advert on Channels 4&5 quite regularly for the past couple of weeks. I believe the advert is for a car. And I've found the lyrics bloody annoying. The only part I could hear clearly was 'check it out now', which is repeated several times. The line before it didn't sound like 'funk soul brother' at all. It sounded like 'fun k so brother'. A bit of googling took me to the song and I still, even knowing the words don't like it.

Obviously, I'm allowed to not like particular songs. But that kind of mishearing/transposing the lyrics happens to me all the time. In To dream the impossible dream" - a song I *do* like the line
'To run where the brave dare not go' sounds like 'To run where the brave never go'
'To love pure and chaste from afar' sounds like 'To love pure and whole from afar'
'Without question or pause' sounds like 'Without question of force'
'For a heavenly cause' sounds like 'For a heavenly host'

I can normally understand about 50% of the lyrics, and then have to google for the rest. I usually completely miss the meaning of a song without googling for the lyrics. IMO, the point of music is that you get to understand what the writer's written the song about by listening to the song. I invariably miss out on that without google. Pre-google I never stood a chance; this is possibly part of the reason I was so anti-music as a teenager.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

To dream the impossible dream

Better in French, though, coincidentally enough, in that version it joins "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (The Band / Joan Baez) amongst songs sufficiently misheard that cover versions were released with the alternative lyrics.

http://www.paroles.net/chansons/20938.htm

[yady.livejournal.com]

I find it annoying when I partially understand a song; I don't mind if I understand nothing of it though. So songs in, say, Japanese are just as OK as music without singing. In Dutch and English I usually understand most of a song (not always the exact words, but I am quite good at filling things in from context). In German, French and to some extent Italian and Spanish, I find myself trying real hard to figure it out. The thing that frustrates me most is when I can't find out what the writer means *because it just makes no sense at all* - filling in from the context just doesn't work then.

[frodomorris.livejournal.com]

From the first ever episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks: "this round is for those of you who think Whitney Houston sings 'I'm shaving off my muff for you'" :-).

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

My mother still sings "bald headed woman" instead of "more than a woman". She is incorrigible when it comes to lyrics ...