Z: “Someday you will find me, Caught beneath the lambslide, In a Champagne Chevy Nova in the sky ...”
She: Huh?
Z: I’m singing that Oasis song.
She: It’s landslide. And it’s “Champagne Supernova.” And that’s the name of the song.
Z: I know. But I still catch myself singing it that way. Lambslide is obviously a little odd, but it was an old family joke.
She: Do you have some sheep-dipping in your past that you’ve never told me about?
Z: No. It was on one of the two family trips that my family took when I was a child. My dad saw a couple of rocks rolling down a hill, and got so excited that he yelled, “Lambslide! Lambslide!”
She: Yeah. A perfectly natural mistake.
Z: So you can see why “lambslide” has pretty much replaced the word “landslide” in my head. And the image that comes to me when I hear the song is of a blazing champagne colored Chevy Nova in the sky, so that’s what I sing when I’m not thinking about the words.
She: It never sounds like you think about the lyrics when you sing.
Z: I’ll confess, it is the only time that the words that come out of my mouth are surprising to me.
She: You don’t listen to yourself that much, do you?
Z: One of my all-time best errors was when I sang Bruce Springsteen. “She went down to the city, into the city she’d drive.”
She: What song is that?
Z: “The River.”
She: The one in which the lyrics are actually, “We’d go down to the river, and into the river we’d dive?”
Z: Yup.
She: On the song called “The River”? On the album called The River? This is the lyric you screwed up?
Z: Apparently, I don’t always pay attention to lyrics. And I like cities. I thought ‘Til Tuesday was singing, “Hush hush, going downtown. This is scary” in “Voices Carry.”
She: I suppose this isn’t such a big surprise. It’s not like you’re a writer or anything, someone who cares about words.
Z: If lyrical misunderstandings weren’t so common, I’d be a little more concerned myself. There are entire Web sites devoted to them.
She: And videos. Here’s my favorite so far.
Z: One of the best stories I’ve seen of misheard lyrics is that Jimi Hendrix perpetuated the misunderstanding of his own lyrics. In some of his shows, he actually sang, “Excuse me, while I kiss this guy!”
She: You’d think he would have learned the words to his own songs.
Z: Even Koss is correcting me on lyrics all the time.
She: He’s not much better than you are. Don’t you remember our spring road trip? I don’t think U2 really sings, “Hello, Ola. You are really hair-e-o.”
Z: That was before he discovered iTunes, and now that he’s started choir, I think he’s going to be even more of a lyric Nazi.
She: Singing the correct words isn’t exactly a sign of Fascism.
Z: Don’t harsh my creative juices, man.
She: For someone who spends so much time doing crossword puzzles, you’ve got very little respect for the written word.
Z: I think ultimately it’s a sign of my simple tastes in art. I respond to melody in music, and color in paintings.
She: What about theater?
Z: I respond to scantily clad women in theater.
She: Then you’re going to love My Fairytale next weekend.
Z: Oh, rats. I thought we were going to see My Furry Tail.
She: No, you didn’t.
Z: Like Led Zeppelin sang, “Olive, my love.”
She: That doesn’t even mean anything.
Z: I just had to get that one in, and couldn’t come up with a good transition.
She: Yes, dear.
— Share your favorite song lyric fouls with She and Z by emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Click here for previous She Said, Z Said columns. Follow Leslie Dinaberg on Twitter.
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