Unintelligible lyrics
A student of mine once became very frustrated when she discovered, after years of being a Blondie fan, that the first line of ‘Heart of Glass‘ was, ‘Once I has a love and it was a gas‘. She was outraged that whatever it was that Debbie Harry was singing, it sounded nothing like those words.
[If the YouTube link doesn’t work, the song can be heard here]
The worst thing was that this student took it all personally. She thought that it was a failure on her part - that somehow her level of English didn’t allow her to comprehend the words of the song.
Of course, native English speakers wouldn’t give this a second thought. We take it for granted that that some singers are more intelligible than others. Compare Debbie Harry’s version of the song with Nouvelle Vague’s, for example:
One possibility for putting students’ minds at ease would be to ask them to play Debbie Harry’s version of the song to a number of native English speakers and ask them to identify the first line. Another good song for this experiment is Nirvana’s Smells like teen spirit.
Misheard lyrics
I recently posted a lesson idea in which students are asked to draw key scenes from the song California Dreaming. That song is one of my all time favourites and I have been singing it in the shower for as long as I can remember. So while planning the activity, I was surprised to find that I have been getting the words wrong at two places:
What I thought:
All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey
I went for a walk on a winter’s day
I stopped into a church I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees and I began to pray
Actual words:
All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey
I‘ve been for a walk on a winter’s day
I stopped into a church I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray
Again, to native English speakers, trivial misunderstandings like these are quite unremarkable. So why do students get so upset when they experience them?
Funny or amusing misheard lyrics
Here are 6 famous misheard lyrics. Can you identify the songs?
- Ken Lee tulibu dibu douchoo
- There’s a bathroom on the right
- Save the whale, save the whale, save the whale
- The ants are my friends
- Excuse me while I kiss this guy
- Pour tea Sir Ray, pour tea Sir Ray
Here’s the first one:
And the others:
Perhaps by introducing learners to the phenomenon of misheard lyrics, we can assure them that when it comes to listening to pop songs in English, there are times at least when we are all susceptible to misunderstanding what is being sung.
The following lesson plan can be downloaded and printed off:
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Notes:
- Misheard lyrics are sometimes called Mondegreens
- Type ‘misheard lyrics’ into YouTube and you will find that there is a culture of people uploading clips like this one.
- As you would probably expect, there are a number of websites and books dedicated to misheard lyrics.
Hi Jamie, used this the other week. I wrote the word Mondegreen on the board, gave the students a few days to find the meaning, then played them the Ken Lee clip. Absolutely right that some take mishearings very personally. This lightened their load considerably, and was very funny. Their next homework was to find further examples. The whole plan really worked. One student emailed me back and said it was the most amazing English class she had ever enjoyed. So thanks again!
Left by Alex Cameron on November 28th, 2008