Mar 2
Hep Me, Rwanda
well since she put me down
i’ve been out doin’ in my head
Which in its own right is weird enough. Dave Barry, in a column some years ago, heard it this way:
well since she put me down
there’s been owls puking in my bed
I’ll bet Brian Wilson wishes he wrote that instead. How better to describe romantic angst than the old reliable puking owls metaphor?
For reasons I’ve since forgotten, I wound up on this website recently. It has a section devoted to misheard lyrics in popular songs. Barry’s interpretation of
“Help Me, Rhonda” is there, and in glancing at a few other Beach Boys tunes, even something as straightforward (or so I thought) as “Fun Fun Fun”
and she’ll have fun fun fun
‘til her daddy takes the t-bird away
gets some rather strange turns of phrase:
and she’ll have fun, fun, fun
‘til her daddy takes the teabag awayand she’ll have fun, fun, fun
‘til her daddy takes the tv awayand she’ll have fun, fun, fun
‘til her daddy takes the t-shirt awayand she’ll have fun fun fun
‘til her daddy takes her t-bone awayAnd she’ll have fun fun fun
‘Til her daddy takes her tuba awayand she’ll have fun, fun, fun
‘til her daddy takes her to her wake
The last one must have been overdosing on Tragic Teenage Death songs at the time.
Surprisingly, they don’t have a lot of songs from the champion syllable-manglers of all time, the Rolling Stones. It took me all of five minutes to figure out the chords to “Honky Tonk Women,” and about five years to figure out just what the hell Jagger was singing about.
“I met a ginnoooakedbawomkeeninn Memphis,” indeed.
P.S. The first lyrics site I looked at for HTW had this
strollin’ on the boulevards of paris
as naked as the day that i will die
the sailors they’re so charming there in paris
but they just don’t seem to sail you off my mind
for the second verse, and I thought: I’ve really got to get my ears checked, because I sure don’t remember that being in it. It might have been from a U.K./European release, or some version they did live in concert.
