Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

I grew up listening to the Indigo Girls and quite often they used words in their lyrics that I did not know and thus I made up words to compensate. For example, “Everybody loves a melodrama and the scandal of a lie” became “Everybody loves a mellow drummer” and it wasn't until several years later that I learned that melodrama was an actual word. I still like to think that the world does love a mellow drummer though.
These misheard or misunderstood lyrics are called mondegreens, a word only recently added to the dictionary (it is a play on the lyric “and laid him on the green” which was heard “Lady Mondegreen”) but I find it useful as a source of constant entertainment. My friend's husband thought the Eagles were singing about having an “East coast easy feelin” and couldn't figure out why someone would think the east coast was so much more chill than the west. I once dated a guy who was totally convinced that Rusted Root was singing a song about “Siemion the Whale” even as I pointed out to him that the song was called “Send Me On My Way”. For years I sincerely thought Janet Jackson wanted to get away and take me on the Ice Capades. Ask a friend to sing to you the lyrics to “Benny and the Jets” or most REM songs and chances are you will hear some odd explanations as to the words. This summer John and I were listening to old REM and it sounded like Michael Stipe was singing about a love kiosk and we were cracking up laughing just thinking about what a love kiosk would look like; I kept seeing a little stand located outside of an Auntie Annies in some mall. Clearly he was singing about love chaos. Only later on did we find out that the song really was called “Love Kiosk” and so what we thought was an obvious mondegreen totally wasn't.
I love that we do this. I love that “Oh Tannenbaum” sounds like “Oh Cannonball” to a five year old; how is she to know what a tannenbaum is? I'd like to think of mondegreens as our own personal Rorschach tests of our sonic selves. Like our imaginations have the absolute best mix of silliness and profundity and it spills out in what we hear. Very often what the lyrics end up being aren't nearly as good as our imaginations have made them.

There are the blatant examples of “there's a bathroom on the right” and “excuse me while I kiss this guy” and, of course, “Revved up like a douche another runner in the night”

Some examples:

Hold me closer, Tiny Dancer—Hold me closer, Tony Danza
Rock the Casbah—Rock the Cat Box
Killing me softly with his song—killing me softly with insults
She's got a ticket to ride—She's got a chicken to ride (MARGARITA) or She's got a tick in her eye
Para bilar la bamba—Bla Bla Bla Bla la bamba (Hatcher's version)
Keep on rockin' in the freeworld—keep on rockin' at Marine World

If you have examples I'd love to hear 'em!

(The title of the post is taken from a character in the Pogo comic series who had a tendency to make up his own lyrics to songs. Churchy's “Deck Us All with Boston Charlie” is probably the most famous.)