Wait, what?

I have titled this post as such because I have a habit of mishearing things. I often have to ask my friends and students to repeat themselves. It's something I'm working on.

The real idea that sparked this blog entry was the fact that I often tend to mishear song lyrics. I'm sure that I am not alone in this matter, but sometimes I get rather upset when I hear the wrong thing. I'm an English teacher, and I have been taughtt to critically read. Song lyrics are just poems set to music, therefore I pay a lot of attention to the multiple layers of meanings that come with lyrics.

The problem with this critical approach to lyrics coupled with my frequency to mishear lyrics is that I tend to form opinions of songs based on the lyrics I think I hear. When I eventually get around to looking up the words on various websites and I find that they are not what I think I heard, I generally get upset. I can think of three specific times this has occurred in recent times. All three of these instances revolve around a single misheard word, but these words seriously affect the meaning of the particular lyric and/or the entire song for me.

1) Jack's Mannequin - "Miss California"
I initially heard the lyrics to the refrain as "You'll be Miss, Miss California/ You'll be kissed by only me." As I was trolling the internets, I came across the slight tidbit of information that it is actually "You'll be missed, Miss California." And this could be an incorrect or way out there interpretation, but the repetition of "miss" versus "missed" when looked at in the context of the rest of lyrics of song causes me to infer that "Miss California" is not going with our narrator willingly. And that makes me dislike the message of the song a little bit. Instead of me hearing a song about two people running away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world, I now hear a song about a dude trying to sequester his lady-friend. Not cool.

2) Raine Maida - "Yellow Brick Road"
I've only just recently begun listening to the amazingness that is Raine Maida's solo album that features all acoustic instruments, spoken word, and oodles of those deep lyrics that I love to interpret as applying to my life and my life only as if they were written just for me. Narcissist in the house. Aside from Raine quoting T.S. Eliot in this song (and not just any old T.S. lines, oh no. It had to be one of my fav lines from my fav poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"), I initially heard my other favorite line in the song as "We were having a near-life experience." I LOVED the idea of this line, because I've heard all about near-death experiences, but who thinks of NEAR-LIFE experiences?? Brilliant! Then I looked up the lyrics, and found that all of the lyrics sites I checked stated that the line was actually "We were having a mere life experience." How cheap! To imply that these people that are described in this fantastic song are just "merely living" lessened the impact of that line. Thankfully, I have chosen to believe that my hearing of the lyrics is the correct one as I have now listened to the song about 20 more times, and I am convinced of an 'n' sound rather than an 'm.' I have also seriously considered creating a new Myspace in order to friend Raine Maida and message him this very question, "Near or mere, pal?"

3) Our Lady Peace - "Sorry"
Go figure, another Raine Maida related incident. This one is actually a lyric that was not "misheard" by me. I heard the first lyric of this song as "Today's a reason for living." All of the lyrics sites I have checked seem to agree with me. However, Boyfriend hears "Today's THE reason for living." Even though this is not my hearing of the lyric, it still creates an entirely different interpretation of the song for me. Instead of "today" being one of many reasons to live, when we hear "today" as "the" reason for living, I feel that it excludes a lot of other things worth living for. Tomorrow is a pretty good reason for living, too. Oreos, too. Laughter. The first season of Dollhouse on DVD with a super-secret-never-before-aired-epilogue-episode. Lots of other reasons for living. Although I could see that today being THE reason for living would lend itself to those "live for the now" people, I do like my interpretation better, and, since it seems that the interweb agrees with me, I have managed to stick with my reading.

I suppose the moral of this story (blog post?) is that words matter. Actions might speak louder than words, but the difference between "a" and "the" can be broad enough to blow your mind. So, choose your words wisely! You never know what crazy English teacher might be decoding and deciphering them at this very moment.