Another Somebody Sung Somebody's Song Wrong

Hey, You'll Always Play the Hits Just Like You Heard 'Em

Okay, here it comes again, that part toward the end of the Creedence Clearwater song, "Looking Out My Back Door," when John Fogerty sings, "Ann-Marie's an elephant, a-playin' in the band/Won't you take a ride on a flyin' spool . . ."

The mind reels. How delightful: A musical elephant named Ann-Marie (I wonder what instrument she plays). And taking a ride on a flyin' spool? Sounds thrilling, though perhaps a bit tricky and dangerous.

Only I'm pretty certain that's not what Fogerty is singing. Like dozens, maybe hundreds of pop songs I've been singing along with, I know I'm mangling those lines, and have -- can it be? -- for decades.

Back when, the only way to puzzle out a misunderstood lyric was to buy the album and check the lyric sheet or liner notes (you remember albums, don't you, kids?). For more than a decade, it's been easy and free. Tap a few keystrokes into one of the many lyric sites on the Internet, and the words become as clear as sheet music.

But really, why would anyone want to do that? Why would anyone bother to tamper with one's golden, screwed-up, misheard lyrics? Why bother with fastidious exactitude now, after you've been singing it your way at least 6,587 times?

Music is personal, even when it's being consumed by millions of other people. You never lose the songs that seeped into your head at a certain age. They are forever linked to a time, a place, experiences. The associations are vivid: whom you knew, whom you hated, whom you had a crush on. Clothes, food, smells all come rushing back. If you correct what you thought you heard, you pull on the thread of memory, disturbing the entire fabric.

You are, on some level, what you mishear. "Any misheard lyric is an impromptu Rorschach test," writes Gavin Edwards, who has collected misheard lyrics in several volumes of amusingly named volumes (" 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy," "He's Got the Whole World in His Pants," etc.).

When I hear "Beast of Burden," in my mind, it's the summer, and I'm a teenager painting houses again. As the strokes go back and forth in the heat, Mick and I sing the bridge part together: "Yeah, all your sisters, I can suck a duck . . ."

Never understood that line. And I know it isn't right. And I don't care.

Or maybe I'm driving down the coast highway in my first car, to my first real job. It's 6 in the morning (early shift), and I push the cassette into the dashboard. And that staccato bass starts to come up with the sun. And the Knack guy sings -- or so I thought then and now -- "Is it just a matter of time, Sharona?/Is it just a debt to be, a debt to me/Or is it just in my mind, Sharona?"

It doesn't quite make sense. And yet it's perfect.

This Pavlovian response mechanism also works with songs you can't stand. Maybe it works even better with songs you hate because -- and I'm sure brain scientists will back me up on this -- songs you hate bore even deeper into your consciousness than songs you love. I've had a nagging suspicion all these years that the lyrics to "Dancing Queen" don't go: "Night is young and the music's high/We can do the Watusi/Everything's fine . . . " But I like it better that way. I mean, she's a dancing queen, so surely she'd know how to do the Watusi.