Have you ever misheard a song lyric? Maybe you thought the Creedence Clearwater Revival song was saying “there’s a bathroom on the right” instead of “bad moon on the rise.” Or when singing along to Taylor Swift’s hit song Blank Space, did you hear that she’s “got a list of Starbucks lovers"?
If so then you, my friend, have experienced a mondegreen. According to Dictionary.com a mondegreen is defined as “a word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of another word or phrase, especially in a song or poem.” In fact, the word ‘mondegreen’ is a mondegreen too. The word was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in 1954 when she explained mistaking a line in her favorite Scottish ballad as “and Lady Mondegreen” instead of “and laid him on the green”. ‘Mondegreen’ was officially added to the dictionary in 2008, but instances of mondegreens have been happening far longer.
It turns out, there are strong psychological reasons behind mondegreens. Half of what we hear is auditory: the sound waves being received by our auditory cortex. It is easier to understand sounds when they are accompanied by visual stimuli (i.e. hearing a bark and seeing a dog). The other half is our brains filling in the blanks based on the expectation of what was said (or sung). If you are distracted by a loud room while listening to the radio, you may not hear every word being spoken and your brain tries its best to fill you in on what you’ve missed, with varying results. Familiarity also plays a part. If you are a zombie, for example, you are more likely to hear the famous “Africa” lyrics “I left my brains down in Africa”, no matter what the band Toto actually intended. Each misinterpretation is like a game of telephone, leading the listener farther away from the actual meaning.
An amusing aspect of some mondegreens is their ability to make sense in the context of the song. My mother used to hear the lyrics to the country song “Jose Cuervo” by Cynthia Jordan a little different than they were intended. Instead of drinking the alcohol “with a little salt and lime” as the song states, she thought the song was drinking “with little thought in mind”. Both are acceptable in context which is why she continued to hear the incorrect words and did not realize until years later the actual lyrics to the song.
One of the most famous and most commonly heard mondegreens comes from Jimi Hendrix’s song “Purple Haze”. In the song, Hendrix sings “Scuse me while I kiss the sky” but it is often misinterpreted as “Scuse me while I kiss this guy.” The mix up could be due in part to people’s familiarity. People are far more likely to hear about kissing guys than kissing skies. The website Kiss This Guy, named for the Hendrix mondegreen, has an archive of many misheard song lyrics that are highly entertaining. So next time you think you hear Madonna say we are “living in a cheerio world” remember you are not alone.
