Karla Bonoff

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!).

All My Life: The Best of Karla Bonoff album at Amazon.com

Karla Bonoff's, "The Water Is Wide"

The Misheard Lyrics:

But love grows old, and wax is cold.

The Real Lyrics:

But love grows old, and waxes cold.

The Story: This is actually one of many versions of this song, by various artists, and many of them could seem to have the same misheard lyric in this line. Being fimilair with one or another variation of the song since childhood, I always wondered what the relevance might be of a reference to cold wax in the middle of a song otherwise having nothing to do with wax. Although I had been familiar with a use of 'wax' as a verb, at least in the present participle form in the term 'waxing Moon', understanding the phases of the Moon really didn't lend any insight into what love 'waxing cold' might mean, So I was grown before I had much chance of understanding this line in terms of the general meaning of 'wax' as in 'love....waxes cold'. Even now, any time I hear most any variation on this song with this same line, I still find it easy to hear 'wax is cold', even knowing what the real words are. - Submitted by: Kirsten Abercrombie

Karla Bonoff's, "Wild Heart Of The Young"

The Misheard Lyrics:

If I thought about all the loves I knew
I know what I would say, it's there for you.

The Real Lyrics:

If I thought about all the loves I knew
I know they'd all fade except for you.

The Story: This song was playing over a scene on the TV show "The Wonder Years" and, the dialogue in these scenes sort of made it hard to correctly understand the lyrics. - Submitted by: Chris

Indexes:

[#]

[A]

[B]

[C]

[D]

[E]

[F]

[G]

[H]

[I]

[J]

[K]

[L]

[M]

[N]

[O]

[P]

[Q]

[R]

[S]

[T]

[U]

[V]

[W]

[Y]

[Z]

New entries in this section are currently reviewed by Brian Kelly. Previous editors (if any) are listed on the editors page.

Submissions!

Would you like to Submit some Misheard Lyrics for a song We're always looking for more entries.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: amIright.com makes no claims to the accuracy of the correct lyrics. All correct lyrics are copyrighted, amIright.com does not claim ownership of the original lyrics.