Misheard lyrics (also called mondegreens) occur when people misunderstand the lyrics in a song. These are NOT intentional rephrasing of lyrics, which is called parody.
For more information about the misheard lyrics available on this site, please read our FAQ.
This page contains a list of the songs that have stories about their misheard lyrics submitted.
Song names are sorted by first letter, excluding A and The. This is sorted by song title only, not
by song title and performer. So if two different performers preformed the same song, you'll see
misheard lyrics for both on the same page (provided the song title was spelt the same both times, and
misheard lyrics have been submitted for both!).
Man In Motion album at Amazon.com
John Parr's,
"St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)"
You're just a prince of H***
And you're tryin' to break free.
You're just a prisoner
And you're tryin' to break free.
The Story: Occasionally I will start singing along to piped-in music when shopping. It's sort of like free karaoke and it's usually just to embarrass my friends when I serenade them. The other night we stumbled by a drugstore to pick up a few things and this song comes on. I'm a little tipsy so I start singing, loudly and badly. I get to the part with above lyrics (that I had assumed were correct) and right before the chorus kicks in some other customer yells out 'it's 'prisoner,' not 'prince of H***,' you fool!' That stopped me cold while I thought about it and my friends were on the floor laughing from the expression on my face. - Submitted by: Rik Baylor
John Parr's,
"St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)"
Born to run, don't know just how far that I can go
Burning up, don't know just how far that I can go
The Story: I used to think this song was Born to Run, and I thought Bruce Springsteen was singing it, until I heard the real Born to Run for the first time. - Submitted by: Gary Everett
John Parr's,
"St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)"
Send almost fire
St. Elmo's fire
The Story: I (not a native speaker) always thought it means something like "I'm about to call in the cavalry" - or rather the artillery. Then I saw a subbed Youtube video recently *blush*. - Submitted by: Christian
John Parr's,
"St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)"
Gonna be your fairy motion
Gonna be your man in motion
The Story: Kind of sounded gay to be a fairy…like the Tooth Fairy or Tinker Bell. - Submitted by: Cody Finke
New entries in this section are currently reviewed by Brian Kelly. Previous editors (if any) are listed on the editors page.