Part Three of a continuing series.
All I want is a room somewhere Far away from the cows I fear!
What? You say those are not the lyrics to Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? When I was a little kid I was sure those were the correct words, and I would belt’ em out at any family gathering at which I had the opportunity to perform. Only after innumerable concerts did my aunt let me know that she didn’t think I had it quite right. But as hard as I listened to the My Fair Lady album, I couldn’t correctly discern that the pre-Henry Higgins Liza Doolittle was actually singing “far away from the cold night air.”
Nowadays when you can’t quite figure out a lyric of your new favorite song, you just go to songlyrics.com or some similar site and wham-bam there you have it. But remember how much harder it was before the Internet?
Of course, there were always ways to “get the words.” I remember in 6th or 7th grade taking the EL downtown with a guitar-playing friend just so that he could get the sheet music for the Royal Guardsmen’s bit hit Snoopy vs The Red Baron. He told me figuring out what chords to play was easy without the sheet music, but knowing what lyrics to sing was a whole lot harder.
The Beatles made it easier when Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band became one of the first albums, and probably the first rock/pop album, to print lyrics on the cover. We still might not have known how many holes it took to fill the Albert Hall, but at least we knew what John was singing.
Plenty of websites have lists of misquoted or misheard lyrics. Jimmy Hendrix’s Purple Haze is the song mentioned most often, as psychedelicized fans misheard “excuse me while I kiss the sky” as “excuse me while I kiss this guy.” Being straight and sober, I never made that mistake.
However, I did insert one pharmaceutical reference where it didn’t belong–and being married to a life-long Neil Diamond fan this is something I should be ashamed to admit. In Diamond’s 1970 #1 hit Cracklin’ Rosie (his first #1) Neil croons “Girl, if it lasts for an hour, that’s all right.” But for years I thought he was singing “Girl a little aspirin, oww, that’s all right.” After all, in a song about cheap wine, why shouldn’t he have been praising a hangover cure?
So what lyrics have YOU misheard? When have you embarrassed yourself by giving your all, singing with your friends, with your partners, or with your kids, only to realize you got those words all wrong. If it has happened to me, it has happened to you!
Just remember, when you get your cows wrong, it can loverly, and udderly entertaining!
This is episode 3 of our My Fair Lady project, using a title or lyric from each song in the original Broadway cast album to inform or inspire a blog post.
Previous Posts in the series:
Getting More From Les 