Is the technical term - Gladly the cross-eyed bear, and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

I've only recently realised, after 30 years, that the first line of Gangsters by The Specials isn't Why must you wreck all my phone calls?

Don't know about Tesco/Winner Takes It All, but I do know they "called me last night from Glasgow" on Super Trouper.

but I only realised the other day that the title of "Mock the Week" is a pun.

One of dubious taste but, given the content of the programme, very appropriate.

It wasnt until last year that i realised the opening line was "Bernie Rhodes knows, dont argue"

I wish I had my own, amusing, misheard version, but I dont.

Now I realise that this post furthers this thread not one iota.

12 hour night shifts have a way of turning brains to mush.

Sorry.

that I realised the lyrics to the dad's army theme tune didn't go

"Mr. Brown goes off to town

and he ain't 21

But he comes home each evening
And he's ready with his gun"

"instead of Mr. Brown goes off to town

On the 8:21. ... "

Think I always thought it was a comment on the age of the cast/home guard members and yet they were still willing to fight etc.
BTW it was the episode about Godfrey's Military Medal tonight *oh I've seem to have something in my eye*...

First song, first album

I heard "India, you`re my bus stop...."

I understand it to be "India, you`re my love song.."

Gonna see them at The Ritz in Manchester on Tuesday so will listen out.

My daughter asked me at around 6.30am (early riser) if I could put one of 'my songs' on her iPod. My heart sank, as this is a regular test of my sanity, mainly because she usually only knows a few words from the lyrics and these almost always turn out to be wrong.
This morning's pop quiz was 'that song with Jamaica in it'.
I tried the obvious - but it wasn't Dreadlock Holiday. Was it the Zeps' D'ya Maker? No such luck. 3 hours of pestering later, with my patience frayed to hell, I tweeted the Word Massive on Twitter for help.
Many tried, but only one succeeded. I would like to thank everyone for their efforts, but give the winner a special thank you. Step up and take a bow, Mr Welshbenny of this good parish.
He correctly identified the mystery track as REM's The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite. The Jamaica lyric was the "Call me when you try to wake her" bit.
The man is a genius.

I used to sing along with Billy Joe Royal "Lord I must be on a foursome Down In The Boondocks"

As a 10 year old, I always thought the opening line to the above was "I'm A Prima Donna ", not realising it was "Ivory Madonna " instead

the words to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" sounds to me just like "keep on to the post office" and I could never figure out what it actually is supposed to be.
I only just read the real words a couple of years ago, but they were so boring and nonsensical to me that I promptly forgot them and keep singing about the post office as usual.
Makes much more sense to me, you always need stamps. Don't stop 'til you get enough stamps!

Evidently Martin Fry hears violins... not violence.

I was briefly under the impression it was performed by the Walsall Symphony Orchestra.

Ireland's industry,
That is what we are...

but as a young and rather naive child I believed the "son of Hickory Holler's tramp" had a gentleman of the road for a father.

John Lennon famously misheard many lyrics. One example is "Money" where he practically improves Barrett Strong's original "Big green" by bellowing out the line "I wanna be free" in its place.

In return, the person that transcribed the lyrics to Beatles songs for Dick James Music must have had a tin ear. There were plenty of published inaccuracies in that catalogue for years - Peter Sellers even included the line "That's why I love to come home" (meant to be "So why on earth should I moan") in his recording of "A Hard Day's Night." The actual music was often painfully wrongly transcribed, too.

The lyric insert to Japanese issues of pop records are often unintentionally funny. The one that springs to mind from memory was a line about a "rocking cow" (the original line being about drinking homebrew from a wooden cup) on a Japanese issue of Chuck Berry's "Rock 'n' Roll Music."

The one I'm occasionally reminded of by my parents, 30 years later, is my childhood mishearing of Lonnie Donegan singing "Oh, the Rock Island Line is a mighty good road." As a four-year-old, I asked my Dad if he could tell me just where "Munningen Row" was.

Robert Palmer's
"Minus twelve paces, you're addicted to love."

for years I thought the chorus of "Motorcycle Loneliness" by V' manics
went
"Oh I'm dying of loneliness, Motorcycle emptiness"
when it's actually "Underneath neon loneliness" or similat prefer my version much more dramatic

but I remember hearing Mike Smith on the Radio 1 breakfast show, when the single was current, (early 80s?) saying that, on first hearing, he thought the first line to Kim Wilde's "View From the Bridge" was "cucumber ridge, can't take any more". Hardly Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross was it?

For a long time I thought Joe Strummer was singing 'Charlene won't like it', wondering who the hell Charlene was.

I used to have a John Prine live album on which he recounted the story of a woman who entreated him to play "...the song about the happy enchilada". After a little detective work he surmised that she was referring to the line "It's half an inch of water but you can still drown" in his song That's The Way That The World Goes Round. He was kind enough to say that if that's what worked for her, then that was okay by him.

always caused me to wonder why, in 'Needles and Pins' by The Searchers, when they got to the bridge they started crying "Edna! Edna!" and then I realised they were singing "Hurtin' her. Hurtin' her".

I could never fathom out the line in the Jam's "Strange Town" about being betrayed by your "acid tomatoes". I assumed (as I still do today about lyrics I don't fully understand) that it was something to do with drugs.

“…she used to be a diplomat, but now she’s down the Laundromat, they washed her mind and now she finds it hard…” (Highly Strung).

But amazingly not only did someone actually publish this nonsense but his mates took him to court for their share of the credit on this and other gems (“stealing cake to eat the moon” anyone??)

Until yesterday, in fact, I always thought John Lennon was singing:

"She's Phyllis Diller when she'd jacked to the hilt."

Apparently not.

As a young teenager in the 90s, I always thought the Mike Reid imposed ban on Frankie Goes To Hollywood was down to the song's promotion of vehicle thivery: "Don't do it, when you want a car." A friend's mum put me right over an embrassing dinner......

The Stranglers' Golden Brown. For years i sang (mostly to myself), "...lays me down with my Minesherans" I wasnt sure what Minesherans were, but i was pretty sure they were some sort of harem or mystical handmaidens. Wasnt til years later and saw it written down that "with my mind she runs" revealed another scene.

Happily believed for years that next line was 'Take your muff downtown' and still think it's got a lot to recommend it ...

Down urinal, urine pretty much from 1:36 onwards.

For many years I thought that the lyric in the Walker Brothers' My Ship is Coming In went '...dry your eyes with cellophane...'. Could never work out the deep significance of it until I was finally told the real words

wrong thread

How does this happen?

For a long time, I thought young Liam was singing 'Sally let me kiss you' in Supersonic and, already being aware of the reference to Sally in Don't Look Back In Anger, decided she must be the girl that broke poor Noel's heart.