Men on Mars

We know all about mondegreens - those song lyrics where people mishear the words and think it's about something entirely different. Probably the most well-known is "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" - a mishearing of "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" from Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze".Probably my most embarrassing personal mondegreen moment came in my teens was when I was singing along with "I Shot the Sheriff" (I can't remember if it was the Bob Marley or Eric Clapton version, I've heard both too many times to be able to remember).I belted out, around a group of several people I was just getting to know:

I shot the sheriffBut I did not shoot the dead man too

Yeah, I'm not proud of it. I was utterly embarrassed when the real lyric was pointed out ("But I did not shoot the deputy"). It makes a lot of sense in hindsight, of course. Though one might note that the singer says he merely shot the sheriff, not that he killed the sheriff, so maybe there was some other dead guy lying there and the singer was pointing out that he shot the guy who was still alive, but didn't commit murder. I mean, did you ever think of that? No. I didn't think so.Anyway, that's not the real point of today's post. I'm talking about song lyrics where you know the actual lyrics, but always hear them wrong anyway.Take Toto's "Africa." Please. I heard it this morning in the supermarket, which plays all '80s music all the time (it's kind of awesome - I think they figured out Gen Xers are a big part of their market, because some of us still actually go to the store and shop for food instead of ordering it online and still sometimes cook our own meals.The actual lyric:

There's nothing that a million men or more could ever do.

What do I hear? Every time?

There's nothing that a million men on Mars could ever do.

I tried to tell my husband this as we were on the checkout line this morning, but this was not high up on the list of things he found interesting. Fair.Of course, I posted it on Facebook, and it exploded. Apparently, I am not alone in this mondegreen in hearing only. I even learned that for some people, this was their "I Shot the Sheriff" moment. Except that we're all too old to actually care about such embarrassments and I don't think they felt embarrassed.What song lyrics do you stubbornly mis-hear?Image by StockUnlimited.