What did I just hear?

I've always enjoyed music.  (I actually have a playlist for my life.)  If I'm alone I sing along to everything on the radio, even if I don't know the words.  I'll just make up my own lyrics and go for it.

But sometimes, well, sometimes...

I've always enjoyed "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind.  It's so upbeat and catchy.  I honestly thought it was a cute little love song.  Well... it's not.  I finally heard a line from the song a couple of weeks ago and looked up the lyrics.  Yeah, that is NOT a love song.  It's about doing crystal meth.  Did I hear it wrong?  Did I just not hear that line?  I have no idea, but it's not the only time I've done something like that.

In 1973 a band named Golden Earring released it's own catchy little tune.  Well, I guess it's not little since it comes in at around six minutes, but anyway...  I liked the song, and I would just belt out, "We've got a thing that's called Radar Love."  I sang it that way for two years or so, and then someone told me the name of the song wasn't "Radar Love" but was actually "Red Hot Love."  So, I changed up, and I've been singing "We've got a thing that's called Red Hot Love" for about the last 47 or 48 years.  

On my drive home this afternoon I heard the song on the radio, and I just sang my lungs out about "Red Hot Love."  As soon as I got home I went to add the song to my Oldies playlist on Amazon Music, but when I searched for "Red Hot Love" what came up was NOT the song I was looking for.  I couldn't find it anywhere, so, on a whim, I searched for "Radar Love" instead.  Heavens to Betsy!  I was singing it right the first time.  It really is "Radar Love."  I've been mishearing it for decades after I originally heard it correctly.

Misunderstood song lyrics are nothing new.  We don't understand or clearly hear a phrase, and our brain turns it into something that makes sense to us.  That's known as a mondegreen, a word coined by writer Sylvia Wright when she misunderstood a line in the "The Bonny Earl of Murray."  While Green heard "Lady Mondegreen," the actual line was "lay'd him on the green."

So, do we just mishear lyrics, or do we hear what want, like I did with "Semi-Charmed Life"?  I have no idea, but I'm getting a new Amazon Music play list out of it -- "Songs I obviously don't know the words to."