Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Everything I've ever known is wrong.

To aid my concentration at work, I subscribed to Spotify.  On busy days, it's all Beethoven and "Gentle Countryside Ambience with Bird Song and Light Wind - 70 mins."  On less busy days, it's more of me looking up songs I haven't heard in years and sometimes, through the magic of headphones, hearing lyrics I thought I knew in a brand new light, i.e., correctly.

Two recent examples:

1.  Train's "Drops of Jupiter."  I now know the line is, "That heaven is overrated."

I always thought it was "Van Halen is overrated."

A little of my respect for Train died with the realization that they were not making a bold pop culture judgment here.  That line made that song for me.  I'm even more disappointed after determining that I was hearing the line about Tae Bo correctly.

2.  Nickelback's "If Today Was Your Last Day."  I now know the line is, "Leave old pictures in the past."

I always thought it was "evil bitches in the past."

Likewise, though I have already lost all shreds of dignity by publicly admitting to listening to Nickelback, that line used to be the best part of the whole song for me. Any song that saccharine needs just a hint of bite to fully sell itself, and come on, it gives the whole effing story a punch of truth to think about these guys leaving "evil bitches in the past" with today being their last day and all.

UGH, so lame, guys.

Aiding in my mishearing, "pictures" sounds more like "pitchers" the way it's sung, and that reminded me of fifth grade when our English assignment was to come up with a list of as many homophones (words that sound alike but are spelled differently) as possible, and Chris Brown had "picture" and "pitcher" on his list because his 10-year-old self thought they were pronounced identically.  He was visibly stunned when told he was wrong.

All these years later, I now know exactly how that must have felt for him.

Image source.

3 comments:

  1. LOL

    I don't wanna know how many lines I get wrong with my "2nd language english" O.o"

    Annie

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    Replies
    1. Ha! Who knows - maybe I overthink it, and you'd be better off than me! :D

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