I’m basically out of the mondegreen business these days, but I still file away misheard lyrics, and recently had two that you may find interesting.

The first was from Jay-Z on his “Empire State of Mind” single with Alicia Keys. I thought he was rapping “Long live the World Trade / Long live the Kingdome,” which bothered me because the Kingdome is in Seattle, and that seemed like the sort of thing he should know. The actual lyric, it turns out, is “Long live the king, yo.”

The second is from “Because the Night.” Not until I heard Bruce Springsteen’s version on The Promise did I realize the first two lines of the chorus were “Because the night belongs to lovers / Because the night belongs to lust.” (Followed by “Because the night belongs to lovers / Because the night belongs to us.”) “Lust” and “us” is an interesting near-rhyme, but I had always assumed Patti Smith was singing “love.” Going back and listening to it, she’s pretty consistently singing “Because the night belongs to looauooast.”

posted 2 December 2010 in Tasty Bits and tagged Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, mondegreens, Patti Smith. no comments yet