Best Mondegreens

Best Mondegreens

Best Mondegreens. Top 5 Musical Mondegreens. When Sylvia Wright first dubbed misunderstood song lyrics as mondegreens back in 1954, I'm not sure she realized what she had started. Yes, she did the world a great service by coining a term for those unfortunate instances where singers garble the lyrics so greviously that people mishear the words, but it's a safe bet that Wright probably never countenanced the fact that such things would become a facet of popular culture, let alone that one day they would be subject to lists of popularity.


However, the blame for that probably rests more on the shoulders of the singers with questionable diction than on her. After all, if more singers sang clearly and concisely, mondegreens wouldn't exist in the first place, would they? So without further ado, let's take a quick peek at the most popular of mispronounced, shall we?


5-  Manfred Mann's Earth Band-Blinded By The Light

Granted, singing "wrapped up like a douche" is liable to get you funny looks, but I suppose it makes about as much sense as "revved up like a deuce."

4-  Beck-Loser

One of the problems with slipping in lyrics in a foreign language is that it throws a wrench in the works for those who don't recognize it as being such. Hence, why I spent so many years thinking "soy un perdedor" was "so I opened the door."

If it weren't for Spanish 101, I'd probably still think those were the words, too.

3- Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody

Again with the foreign language, although this time I didn't have a foreign language class to help me out.

I will say this much, though: There is something intensely embarrassing about learning that it's "scaramouche" as opposed to "scare a moose" while singing this song during a badly-advised karaoke session.

2- Creedence Clearwater Revival-Bad Moon Rising

Thanks to John Fogerty's accent, instead of "there's a bad moon on the rise" we have been blessed with the ultimate roadtrip anthem of "there's a bathroom on the right."

I have to admit, out of partiality, this one is nearest and dearest to my heart, but even so, it must bow down to the most famous mondegreen of all:

1- The Jimi Hendrix Experience-Purple Haze

There's a reason why the mondegreen in this song is the title of a collection of mondegreens, folks. As misunderstood lyrics goes, this is the one that comes first to mind for many, simply because it doesn't matter how closely you listen, or even if you look up the lyrics and read along as the track plays--it never stops sounding like "'scuse me while I kiss this guy." Never.

So there you have it, folks: a top five list of musical mondegreens. Granted, I just barely scratched the surface with this, as that there are literally thousands of mondegreens in the musical world, but these five seem to be the ones that continue to live on, no matter how many times they are corrected. Why that is, I don't know, but as the revered Bob Dylan once sang, "the ant saws are blowing in the wind."

Or something like that.

Source:hubpages