HaederleZTake
Mondegreens
Column by Jim Haederle (7/20/22)
Impeccable diction has never been a prerequisite for rock vocal performances. From Michael Stipe to Van Morrison to Stevie Nicks, the list of singers not known for their articulation is a long one.
As a result, there are numerous songs I grew up with that contain words or phrases I consistently misheard. Unless I saw the lyrics printed on an album sleeve or CD insert, I was unaware I was hearing them incorrectly. But with the advent of the
Internet and the ability to search for any lyric imaginable, I came to realize how wrong I’d been about the words to certain songs.
For years, I thought the opening line of Stevie Nicks’ Edge Of Seventeen was “Just like the one we love”, not “Just like the white-winged dove”. I initially assumed the chorus of the Go-Go’s hit Our Lips Are Sealed was “Honest Lucille”. Big Audio Dynamite sang “Situation no-win” in their song Rush, but I always heard it as “Situation nowhere...” which, arguably, is just as good a lyric.
These are all examples of “mondegreens”, a term coined by American author Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Harper’s Magazine essay. As a child, her mother read to her an ancient Scottish ballad, The Bonny Earl Of Moray, which included the line “They
have slain the Earl o’Moray and laid him on the green.” The young Sylvia Wright thought it was “They have slain the Earl o’Moray and Lady Mondegreen.” That funny word (itself a mondegreen) caught on, used to describe any misinterpretation of a
phrase that gives it an entirely new meaning.
There are mondegreens that most people know are incorrect, but we chuckle at the comic incongruity of the misheard lyric. In Purple Haze, would the unquestionably -- heterosexual Jimi Hendrix really sing “‘S’cuse me while I kiss this guy?”. In John
Fogerty’s Bad Moon Rising, did he really want his listeners to know “there’s a bathroom on the right?”.
As amusing as mondegreens can be, they can also occasionally prove lucrative. One summer day in 1966, songwriter Bobby Hart turned on his car radio just in time to catch the fadeout of the newest Beatles single. To his ears, the falsetto refrain was
not “Paperback Writer”, but “Take the last train to...”
Liking the sound of that phrase and eventually realizing that he was not pilfering a Beatles lyric, Hart and his partner Tommy Boyce used it for the opening line of a song intended as the first single for a newly-formed TV band, The Monkees. That
mondegreen gave birth to Last Train To Clarksville, a catchy tune that topped the Billboard charts in November 1966 and launched The Monkees’ recording career.
Perhaps the greatest impact a mondegreen had on modern culture occurred during The Beatles’ first US tour. In August of 1964, the lads from Liverpool hosted their American folk hero Bob Dylan at their hotel suite in New York City. After Dylan was
given the “cheap wine” he requested as a libation, he proceeded to break out some pot and roll joints for the band. Until this time, The Beatles had strictly been drinkers and pill-poppers, having acquired a taste for amphetamines during their
marathon club gigs in Hamburg years earlier.
Dylan expressed surprise that the Englishmen were not familiar with the mind-altering wonders of marijuana. “In the bridge of I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, Dylan asked, “Aren’t you singing ‘It’s such a feeling that, my love, I get high?’”.
“No”, they corrected him, “We’re singing ‘I can’t hide’”.
But from that day forth, The Beatles’ newfound affection for cannabis impacted not only the trajectory of their music, but also their already-considerable influence on their millions of fans.
Thus was the 1960’s drug culture born from a simple mondegreen. So the next time you misinterpret a song lyric, get excited! You might end up writing a hit song or changing the course of popular culture.
Jim Haederle is a father, freelance writer, songwriter, singer/keyboardist with "The Force," actor, cartoonist, presidential history buff, and can name every James Bond movie in chronological order.
YouTube - "Purple Haze" - Jimi Hendrix Experience
YouTube - "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - The Beatles
©2022 Roger Zee
