What's the Blog du Jour? It's the blog of the day.

This topic has come up in conversation a few times over the last month or two, so I'd be interested to see in anyone has any additions to the upcoming list: Song Lyric Misinterpretations.

I'll start with a recent one, since Richie and I were discussing it over the weekend. It's from Kanye's Never Let Me Down. I thought the line ended with "...when you see my cock'n'balled up...", but it's actually "...when u seen my car get balled up..." I know, my rendition makes no sense, but when I look back on instances where I've totally botched lyrics, rarely do my versions makes sense.

You probably know the 'Stones Beast Of Burden, right? A friend of mine from a few years back used to tell me she thought they were saying "I'll never be your pizza burning". Metaphorically speaking, I liked this interpretation, because I hate burnt pizza. So thanks for not ever being my pizza burning. I also thought that Under my Thumb was actually Under My Tongue.

Most of the music I listen to now is a direct result of my oldest brother. He used to crank Sweet Emotion when my parents weren't home and I always thought they were saying something like "deep in the moonshine". Clearly I was way off, but I think my version is cooler. I can't even tell you how many lines of It's the End of The World... that I had wrong. I think maybe all of them, with the exception of "birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom". I hate that line. Who the fuck has cheesecake for their birthday cake? And jellybeans? Sounds like a cross between Easter and...well, and dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. My family never had cheesecake. If I'm in the minority here, please let me know.

Another one Rich and I have discussed is We Didn't Start The Fire, in which we both that he was saying 'trouble in the sewers' as opposed to 'trouble in the Suez'. During our conversation, we both mentioned something about that terrible sewage problem in NYC back in the day. Wait, what? Following this, I mentioned that it always reminded me of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in that they traveled through the sewers. I gotta say that Raphael was my favorite Turtle. But Splinter always kind of creeped me out.

You remember that Beck song, Loser? This song exhibits lyrics that, in my opinion, are what other words sounded like to Beck in hearing something else entirely. In other words, it's a song of conglomerated misinterpretations of lyrics. Check it out: (I may get some of this wrong, as it's truly all from memory)

In a time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey
Butane in my brain, I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables,
Dog food skulls with the beefcake pantyhose.

Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin' with a loser in the cruise control
Baby's in Reno with the Vitamin D
Got a couple couches, sleep on the loveseat.

Someone keeps sayin' I'm insane to complain about
A shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don't believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve.

So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin' all your food stamps and puttin' down a trailer park.

Yo. Cut it.

(chorus) Soy el perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.

Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare

Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's up the pole, shove the other in the bag.

With the rerun shows and the cocaine nosejob
The daytime crap of the folk singer's suave.
He hung himself with a guitar string
Slab of turkey neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing.

So get right if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef, for the body, for the hate.
And my time is a piece of wax
Fallin' on the termite...who's chokin' on the splinters. (awesome irony there, eh?)

(followed by a Bush line, Sprechen ze Deutsch or whatever, etc.)

See what I mean? Well, that's what I think, anyway. I'm sure that Beck's reasoning behind these lyrics is far more intellectual than my given explanation. Actually, if you read through those lyrics a few dozen times, there is some sense to it. Metaphorically speaking, it's so fucked.

One more thing...when that song came out, I bought a Beck t-shirt that SubPop put out, reading simply 'Loser' on the front of the shirt with the SubPop label on the back. I wore this to mall when I was 14 or so and I've never taken so much verbal abuse in my life. I gotta find that t-shirt.