At a homecoming dance my freshman year of high school, I belted out the lyrics to the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of the Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster.” It went something like this:

• “At the bus stop/of lo-o-ove
• At the bus stop/whoo-ooh-ooh!”

It wasn’t until years later that I realized my enthusiastic warbling of those lyrics was totally wrong. (For those who haven’t heard the song, the real lyrics are “Rollercoaster/of lo-o-ove.”) Luckily, I’m not alone in my public embarrassment.

There’s this site called Kiss This Guy, which houses thousands of other unfortunate misheard songs and lyrics. (And lo, I wasn’t the only one singing about a bus stop.) Between page clicks and our tears of laughter, my bf and I noticed a trend: Many of the misheard lyrics were about food. For example, Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas” is turned into a heartfelt love song about everyone’s favorite meat candy:

• “Bebo, loves bacon/
• Bebo, loves bacon”

Real lyrics:

• “Viva, Las Vegas/
• Viva, Las Vegas”

So who’s Bebo?

(Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more of my favorites.)

And at some point during the ‘90s, you couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing UB40’s cover of Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine.” Some listeners thought for sure it was about a Surf and Turf special:

• “Red Red wine/
• Steak, lobster, meat”

Real lyrics:

• “Red red wine/
• stay close to me”

To me, the former actually makes more sense than the real lyrics, which are either about a woman this guy has nicknamed or a guy who’s drowning his sorrows with a bottle. Or both.

Madonna is pretty well-represented on the site. It seems there’s a vast majority of people who can’t understand what she’s saying, and this rings especially true when she’s attempting a Spanish accent. Take “La Isla Bonita,” which has dozens of misheard lyrics. When you string some of the user-submitted one-liners together, this is what you get:

• “Last night I dreamt of some bagels
• Just like I’d never gone, I knew the song
• Young girls with eyes like potatoes
• It all seems like yesterday, not far away

• Chocolate coated onion rings
• All of nature wild and free
• This is where I long to be
• La Isla Bonita”

Now that sounds like a place I’d like to visit someday.

And what about “Bohemian Rhapsody”? It took me awhile to realize what Queen was singing about but some of us are still a little confused:

• Real lyrics: “Spare him his life from this monstrosity!”
• Misheard lyrics: “Spare him his life from his warm sausage tea!”

Please do. I didn’t know you could steep a sausage, but I imagine it can’t be that great.

Finally, I leave you this inspirational bite for the weekend ahead:

• “Tequila in me is tequila in you.”
• Real lyrics: “The killer in me is the killer in you.”

When knew that Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm” could be such a party starter?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under At the table. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.