Mercy

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Aside from being an excellent chacha that I’m pretty sure was on the list for so many medal tests I scribed for, danced, ran the music for… and so on, this song is really excellent for its fabulous seventies styling in the music video.

It also contains one of my favourite ever mondegreens, as first noted by the comedian Peter Kay in his stand-up routines. A mondegreen is the official term for misheard lyrics, such as Taylor Swift’s “starbucks lovers”, or Hendrix’s “kiss this guy”. I know lots of people spend time trying to get to the hidden messages behind lyrics, and most of the time, it’s just a crossed connection in the brain. People are so good at pattern recognition, and when a pattern isn’t quite complete, your brain sometimes goes in and fills in some details to make it more sense.

Anyway, this song’s mondegreen?

“You got me begging you for bird seed”.

Or not 😀

My other all-time favourite inaccurate lyric may not so much be misheard as intentionally mis-directed: “Who you gonna call? THOSE BASTARDS!”. I challenge you not to sing that whenever you hear Ghostbusters going forward.

Do you have any favourite misheard lyrics, or ‘family versions’ of well-known songs?

Lightning blog 60.

Writing song: