Monday, May 11, 2009

the tip of the misheard-lyrics iceberg

we've all had our share of misheard lyrics. some from us, some from our equally song-loving friends. even though i have an unconfirmed case of early alzheimer's, there are a few choice lines i might never be able to remove from my battered memory.

one of my favorite moments happened while a former officemate and i were driving out of the parking lot, happy to be going home after a long work day. after searching for a singable tune on the radio, we were excited to chance upon the extremely sentimental cliff richard classic ...

love ...
can't you see i'm alone
can't you give this fool a chance
a little love ...


(you're singing along, arencha? show of hands.)

as we built up to the refrain, i got ready to sing my lungs out. i could barely hear my officemate what with all the belting and all, but quite unfortunately, i heard this:

OOOOCEAN DREEEAMS!!!

stop the car. ocean whuttt??? we completely forgot about singing in the next few minutes, as we were busy trying to gasp for air after a major laughing spell.

of course she was also the source of another favorite lyric moment.

ladies and gentlemen, kindly welcome the pre-american idol paula abdul, or at least my innocent officemate's interpretation of her:

he's a cold-hearted snake, LISTEN to his eyes!

(of course when i retold this story the day after, i inadvertently sang it as "he's a cold-blooded snake ...", which, although zoologically correct, just completely destroyed the joke. )

in more recent events ...

my friends and i were on our way to the beautiful anvaya cove. everyone was in a good mood. so good that they convinced me to sing some old songs in a cappella. for some reason, my sister (mom of my blog's stars, juancho and martina) asked me to sing the 80s hit 'lost in emotion' by lisa lisa and the cult jam. and for some other (maybe equally strange) reason, i obliged.

after wading through what i remembered from the first verse, we got to the refrain and everyone joined in (with the possible exception of 2-year-old martina):

lost in emotion
telling you things you really shouldn't know
oh baby, I'm lost in emotion
am I a fool?
at least my friends think so ...


at this point, my friend (who i will call 'jp' to protect his identity) decided to jump in, apparently also lost in emotion himself:

SUSANA SUSANA!!!

riiiight.

(as it turns out, he really doesn't possess the gene for remembering lyrics so the susana moment wasn't a big deal after all. if i had to document every misheard lyric from this guy, i'd have to create a whole new blog. hmm.)

of course jp must've been out of sorts that day. when we entered anvaya, his response to the guard's 'welcome to anvaya' was a cheery 'WELCOME!'

and speaking of older sister ...

when 'the little mermaid' was all the rage among kids and 'hannah montana' was just a figment of imagination (how i love those miley-less days), another 3-year-old niece had me sing "part of your world" repeatedly on what was quite possibly the longest plane ride from manila to san francisco. needless to say, that was a whole lot of ariel.

despite the frequent repetitions, however, ate still thought that the half-fish redhead was singing:

strolling along down a (what's that word again?) street
a pretty walk! a pretty run! a pretty stay all day in the sun


which kiiiind of makes sense at the start, but completely falls apart in the end. a pretty stay all day in the sun. yeah. then again, life doesn't always have to make sense.

and speaking of serious matters ...

let us all have a moment of silence for mary, who, according to martina, had a bit of a medical concern:

mary had a little lump, little lump, little lump!

hey mary. hope you had it checked. i know a few good doctors.