Mondegreens and other lyrical musings

 Chris and I were driving last night and one of the games we play in the car is to come up with songs related to a word or phrase.  It's fun, each of us has a weird bank of songs we tap into .  Last night was "sun" and we came up with:

Here comes the sun

Sunshine Superman

Sunrise sunset

and a few others I can't remember.  The game came to a close when he quoted some lyric from Frank Zappa about roaches in a strange kitchen at night.  We were almost where we needed to be at that point and I just gave up.  My mind wandered, as it usually does these days, and I wound up thinking of a mondegreen- or misheard lyric- that is one of my favorites.  In the song "LA Woman" Jim Morrison growls "City at Night" a book by John Rechy about a seedy "underground" in a City I THINK is New Orleans, but I can't remember.  I tried to read it in High School but it did not "grab" me.  Maybe I should try it again.  Anyway, I always heard "Obsidian Night"  which I think is pretty cool, although the theme of the book is probably closer to what Morrison was getting at.

I have been watching the Beatles movie and watching them create their music.  A lot of musicians just riff lyrics until they come up with something that fits.  Phil Collins song "Sussudio" comes to mind.  I remember reading that it was a nonsense word he just sang and likes it so well he kept it.  The songs in the Beatles film that have been haunting me are "I , me, Mine"  and "Dig a pony" George says his song was influenced by a strange Sci-Fi film that had been on television the night before.  They show clips of what he was talking about and the song makes sense.  "Dig a Pony" however is just one of John's nursery rhymes.  I was looking for the lyrics and found a website where someone is absolutely convinced it's about heroin; "pony"="horse" a slang term for heroin.  I doubt it.  From watching him, I think he was just playing with words.  Sometimes, as it has been observed, a cigar is just a cigar.

The same thing happened with the America song "a Horse with no name" that the writer, Dewey Bunnell  says- and I have no reason to doubt it- was a song about the environment.  People swore it was code for his heroin addiction.  uh, yeah.  My favorite America mondegreen is "Bench on a highway" for "Ventura Highway'

The cutest one I ever heard was the sister of my daughter's BFF, who was in the backseat singing with all her heart "Going to the jack-o-lantern, gonna get married" ( see Chapel of Love by the Dixiecups for the real lyric here.

Sometimes a misheard lyric makes the song more meaningful to you.  I wonder if we mishear what our hearts want and our brains comply.