Mondegreen: The problem of misheard lyrics

THEY say that music hath the power to soothe the savage breast. 

I can’t comment. My own breasts haven’t been savage in years. Everything goes south with age I guess. What I do know is that music has the power to confuse. Time and again, a singer’s muttered delivery has caused me to create a strange alternative to the songwriter’s original lyrics. It’s called a mondegreen. A mondegreen is itself a mondegreen. It was coined in 1954 by American writer Sylvia Wright who heard “and Lady Mondegreen”, instead of the line “...and laid him on the green” from the Scottish ballad ‘The Bonnie Earl O’ Moray’.

Many of my mondegreens started as a youngster and they’re very hard to shake off. Life is straightforward when you are five. There are things you understand and things you don’t. The things you don’t understand don’t bother you. They’re for grown-ups. If grown-ups want to sing silly songs that don’t make sense, that’s their look out. Take pop-star and soon-to-be judge on the The Voice UK, Boy George, for example (although be careful). In September 1983, Boy sang “Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon”. But as far as I was concerned, he sang “Become come a come a come a come a comedian”. Given that he has spent time in jail for drugs offences and imprisoning a male escort, Boy George would not be everyone’s first choice as a career guidance counsellor, but he was oddly prescient about me.