I knew I had a problem, from the time I couldn't figure out why doughnuts made Crystal Gayle's brown eyes blue to when, although there was nothing she could do (it being, after all, a total eclipse of the heart), I would have sworn Bonnie Tyler lamented "living on a cul de sac and giving off sparks".

I like that Filter song! But I can't think of any mondegreens except for the old standards: "There's a bathroom on the right" and "My girl wants to potty all the time!"

My friend Tina is famous for these. She has her own set of lyrics for any given song on the radio. We, her friends and admirers, have taken to writing them down. My personal favorite of hers is from the Steve Miller Band song, "Fly Like an Eagle": "Kill the babies who don't have enough to eat, shoot the children with no shoes on their feet..."

Another classic is Jimi Hendrix "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."

Damn KOTWF, you beat me to it... another good one is ACDC - "She was a fax machine, she kept her motor clean"

Speaking of "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy," I just went to www.kissthisguy.com, which is a mondegreen website with about a jillion misheard lyrics like "Fly, fly, Miss American Fly" and of course Ms. Spear's famous lyric "Hit me with your big behind."

I had a friend that when Hello Nasty came out wanted to know why the Beasties had turn mean. He heard "In-ter-ga-lac-tic, kill the children/kill the children, in-ter-ga-lac-tic."

an online community i'm in has the JUKE BOX HERO meme; anytime a particularly witty dah dah didah occurs to one of us, we JBH it. The challenge is of course thinking up the next line (which has to have something about 'stars' or 'eyes' (you had teeth -- body part, good show!).

Skot! In! Belgium!
Beers in his thighs!

So sorry.

My parents listened to Dolly Parton incessantly when I was little. The song 'Wildfowers' contained the curious lyrics "I hitched a ride with the wind in Cincinnati, my friend..." The aforementioned parents thought it was cute so it wasn't until many years later that I learned the correct lyrics were the only slightly less surprising "I hitched a ride with the wind, and since he was my friend..."

My favorite to this day is from a Scorpians song - it was "Here I am, rock you like a hurricane!" and he really draws out the word "hurricane."

My boyfriend at the time thought it was, "Here I am, raunchy like a herpe germ!"

It's funnier if you really try to hear him carry out the sustain on "herpe germ."

"I won't be your pizza burnin'. Don't need no oven..."

and then it gets hard to figure out...

Lessee. For a while I thought the words to "The Boxer" were "Just a come-on from the war zone: Seventh Avenue." The real words are "whores on," not "war zone."

When I was a kid, I heard the refrain to the Bananarama song "Venus" as

I'm your penis...
I'm your fire
What's your desire?

Years ago, a friend of mine thought the words to Bob Marley's "Kaya" were not "Got to have Kaya, now" but "Got to have Tylenol..."

Of course I myself never screw up song lyrics but I have two cases from nearest and dearests:

My mom, riding in the car with me one day, commented on how she couldn't understand HOW in the WORLD a song like CCR's "Lodi" could see the light of day. Especially with such a dumb lyric as "Oh, Lord, suckin' on an old diaper pin." (btw, she as yet has not lived this down)

My cousin, on the other hand, had gone on and on to me forever about how she couldn't believe "Jailhouse Rock" got to be such a classic hit, "as dirty as it was." Huh??? What's dirty about "Jailhouse Rock?" Well, apparently her smutty mind, instead of hearing "I sure would be delighted with your company," heard "I sure would be delighted with your pumpin' me."

Never one to be outdone,here is mine. I am not alone in hearing this though.
The song : FLASHDANCE
- the real lyrics : " Take you passion, and make it happen..."
- heard by the 9 year old me : " Take your pants down, and make it happen..."

I can't believe the biggest Mondegreen song of all time has not been mentioned. It was even a Skit on The State. The song? Blinded by the Light.

Some variations:

"Blinded by the light, held up like a luffe by the foreman of the night."

"Blinded by the light, ripped up like a douche and then you throw away the night."

The funny thing is, I had to go to a lyrics site to get the original:

"Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night"

By the way, this is my first time posting here, but I check/read this site every day. Great stuff.

-Jason

Yeah, we went through a "Best of the 70s" station phase at work and at least once per shift someone would run around singing "Wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night."

Sadly, my memory is such that I cannot contribute anything funny.

At a family wedding I went to a few years back, they played "Strokin'" by Clarence Carter toward the end of the reception.

As we were driving home, my mother commented how much she liked the music. I expressed surprise, 'cause I never hear her listening to rock 'n' roll. She went on to say, "I particularly liked that song about smoking."

I didn't know how to explain that "mom, it wasn't QUITE about smoking..."

First off, my wife used to hear the chorus to Bush's "Machine Head" as "I've got a mushy head, better than the rest."

Second, that thing about "Blinded by the Light" always gets me irked. The problem is that when discussions about this come up, someone says that the actual lyric is "Wrapped up like a Deuce." Which is maybe what Springsteen wrote originally, but there's no way in hell anyone can tell me that that's what Manfred Mann's saying in the cover. He says "Wrapped up like a Douche." I don't think it's a simple matter of mispronunciation, I think he was trying to create this gigantic controversy. He failed, though, as I'm the only one controversied by it.

A friend from college thought the Beatles' song "Paperback Writer" was really "Take the Back Right Turn". It's nearly impossible for me to not sing those lyrics now.

Another old favorite was the Stones' song "(Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo) Hearbreaker", featuring the line "Heartbreaker / with your .44 / I wanna tear your world apart." Her version was "Heartbreaker / with your bowling ball ..."

I was really confused when I first heard Fugazi's "Repeater". I mean, why in the world would such a political DC rock band be singing about This Old House?

One, two, three-eee
Bob Vila!

Y'know, Beck's "Loser" has to be in the Top Five Most Mondegreened of All Time.

"Sore from head to toe..."
"So I don't like candy corn..."
"So-un heyd'na ho..."
"Sword at the door, I'm a lizard..."

Not one of us had it right, not even the freaks who knew all the lyrics. No wonder. It was Spanish:

"Soy un perdedor,
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me."

Probably a lesser Mondegreened song, one of the last songs on Paul Simon's Graceland (I think it's the Myth of Fingerprints) contains the line "Ever since the water melted." Except all I can hear is "Ever since the watermelon."