“Hold me closer, Tony Danza”

I’m a terrible one for misheard lyrics but they make me laugh. My family still tease me mercilessly about my enthusiastic rendition of Under the Boardwalk or, as I liked it, “Under the Doormat”. Similarly I was a little disquieted once upon a time to hear about my beloved Belle and Sebastian’s brush with incest when they sang “My brother had confessed he was gay - he said that he loved me for awhile”. Slightly disturbing yes? Except of course no it was “My brother had confessed he was gay - it took the heat off me for awhile.”

So I was quite excited to find this archive of misheard lyrics recently. Some of them are stupid but harmless, such as the knob who misheard the line from The Smiths’ Bigmouth Strikes Again “And now I know how Joan of Arc felt” as “And now I know that I’m adopted”.

Others, such as thinking R.E.M’s Losing My Religion featured the entreaty “Let’s pee in the corner, let’s pee in the spotlight” (instead of “That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight”) are pretty amusing. I love, too, the Creedence Clearwater Revival fan who must have thought the band had run out of ideas when he misheard Bad Moon’s Rising “There’s a bad moon on the rise” as “There’s a bathroom on the right.”

And personally I think Outkast's Hey Ya would have benefited if the line "shake it like a polaroid picture" was replaced with what one enthusiastic punter swore blind was "shake it like a polarbear ninja".