Carrots not to be sniffed at in the top of the crops
TOP of the Pops in the misheard lyrics chart, is So Lonely, the 1978 song from The Police. Thousands of fans, who couldn’t quite make out the words, had thought Sting was singing “Sue Lawley”.
Everybody has, at some time or another, got the words of pop and rock songs wrong and Earex (they make ear drops for those with hearing problems) has released the latest list that includes Abba’s Dancing Queen having the line “feel the beat of the tangerine” and Starship being credited with the line “we built this city on sausage rolls” rather than “rock and roll”.
There have been many lyrical mistakes made over the years, with popsters happily singing along with the wrong words. Jimi Hendrix was one of the early victims when his Purple Haze line “’scuse me while I kiss the sky” was interpreted as “’scuse me while I kiss this guy” in 1967. Today, the kissthisguy.com website collects such errors, has 120,765 submissions, and is still counting.
Such as Empire State of Mind, a 2009 song from Jay Z and Alicia Keys with the line “concrete jungle where dreams are made of ” and yet even Ed Sheeran, along with many others, thought it was “concrete jungle wet dream tomato”. Whatever turns you on, Ed.
Toto sang: “I bless the rains down in Africa” although some thought it was “I left my brains down in Africa”, Hot Chocolate’s “I believe in miracles” became “I remove umbilicals” and Abba had more problems with “see that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen”. Not nice.
Robert Palmer’s classic, Addicted To Love, was misheard more than most, with many variations on the word “addicted” which cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
Among the less offensive was “my name is Perry Mason, I’m addicted to drugs”.
Even the greats have had problems. Bob Dylan’s “the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” had the alternative “these ants are my friends, they’re blowin’ in the wind”, Pink Floyd specifically said “we don’t need no education” although there were those who were convinced they said “we don’t need no sex vacation”, George Harrison’s “all those years ago” became “all those beers ago” and The Beatles’ immortal line “the girl with kaleidoscope eyes” somehow became “the girl with colitis goes by”.
One of the funniest was from Good For You, the Selena Gomez hit from five years ago, in which the line “I’m a 14 carat” (as in diamond), was misheard as “I’m farting carrots”. BBC Radio 1’s Scott Mills even asked her about it on air.
Selena laughed and said: “Well, wouldn’t that just start the tone really sexy?”
And added: “It’s also because you guys have the accent, so it does kind of sound like that, for sure.”
A girl with a sense of humour as well as talent.