Scuse me while I kiss this guy.

It's not hard to mishear lyrics. Musicians aren't always the most articulate people for starters. But even when their grammar is proper and their annunciation superb, the distortion of a guitar, the rumble of the bass, or the shortness of syllables within a line can cause our ears to be led astray and our minds to construct some crazy ensemble of words. More often then not, I find the resulting construction is some truly funny stuff.

The title of this post is perhaps the most common "mishearance" in rock history. Its source lies in "Purple Haze" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, in which Jimi sings, "Scuse me while I kiss the sky." Jimi himself was so amused by this mishearance that he would sometimes sing the incorrect line in concert as a joke.

Having once briefly been a performer of songs myself, I can relate to Jimi's positive response to his lyrics' twisted reception. During our junior year of high school, we members of Agonist were developing a song called "Transcendence." A more melodic ditty than our usual fair, the lyrics I wrote for this song represented the thoughts and feelings I was experiencing after the death of my grandmother the previous spring. However, several of the first folks to hear us practice the song (including at least one band member) became concerned when they thought they heard me sing the question, "Is it this pain and sodomy that makes me incomplete?" The actual line speaks of "pain inside of me" but it always cracked me up to think that several audience members at any given concert might have thought I had a fixation with masochism and anal sex.

A year or two earlier, "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" had been a big radio hit. I laughed myself silly the first day my friend and former Agonist bassist Josh Hedges told me that he thought the opening lines of that song's chorus were "Spi-i-nal rage/I am still just a rat in a cage." My response to him was," What in the world is spinal rage, Josh? That doesn't make any sense." I believe his response was something like, "What's a bullet with butterfly wings?" He had me on that one.

Josh presently plays in an Indianapolis-based band called Wofly. (Check them out at www.wolfymusic.com. When you get there, Wolfy's, a.k.a. Greg's, voice will direct you to click the link for their new MySpace page.) In their song "Vienna Underground," you could almost swear that Wolfy sings the words "Tumor love/Tumor love/Cheese on the sink." The actual lyrics are something like "To my love/To my love/She's gonna sing."


I was inspired to write on this topic because I've recently been dealing with a mishearing that I know is not correct but had no idea what the proper lyrics were until I looked them up on the internet. On Mastodon's new album Blood Mountain, it sounded to me as though the song "This Mortal Soil" was proclaiming "John Bonham's all about the gland." It made no real sense to imply that the late drummer of Led Zepplin was enamored with an organ of the endochrine system. The official lyric here is "Showing promise of a perfect land." But no matter how many times I relisten to the track with these words in mind, my version still seems to fit better.

I could ramble on for many more paragraphs about mishearances, but I figure it would be better if I just wrapped up by listing a few more quality examples I have encountered. I'll not identify the songs, as they are all pretty well known. See if you know the proper lyrics yourself. And if you don't care to guess, I'll post the "answers" in the comments section....and feel free to submit your own favorite mishearance.


+ "I wanna rock n roll all nite/And part of every day."
+ "Don't go out tonight/It's bound to take your life/There's a bathroom on the right."
+ "Ooo-ah-eee-ah-ooo-ah/Right on the pea stain."