'Cheap wine and a pecan boat'? Inside the world of misheard lyrics (aka mondegreens)

And not just mishear them, but hold onto those incorrect lyrics and quote them as gospel for years, as if there wasn't a chance of me being in the wrong.

And unfortunately, as a big fan of sing-alongs of any kind, I tend to find out I'm incorrect while singing in front of people. And these discoveries can come with mild embarrassment and even disappointment.

Call it self-obsessed but I swear I have never been more disappointed when, at 10 years old, I realised that The Rolling Stones were singing about Angie and not Amy. Up until that point, I also believed that everyone had a song with their name in it and this was meant to be mine.

Speaking of names - there was also a time when I thought that Natalie Imbruglia was singing "I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect guy is Tom" rather than the hit song's title inspiring line "the perfect sky is torn".

And when Cold Chisel sang about cheap wine, it has always been followed by "and a three-day growth" and not "and a pecan boat". Do you know how much time I spent imagining what a pecan boat was? Too much.

But there is a name for this misheard mixtape of songs, and it's a mondegreen. The phenomenon of mishearing lyrics.

And the word mondegreen itself is a mondegreen. It comes from a 1954 Harper's Magazine article where writer Sylvia Wright admitted to mishearing the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl of Murray as saying "They hae slain the Earl o' Murray, and Lady Mondegreen" rather than "and laid him on the green".

The science behind mondegreens however basically comes down to the multiple ways that we process sounds. Hearing is a two-step process - the ears physically taking in soundwaves, and the brain translating that information. But while our ears all take in the information the same way, our brains process that information in different ways.

On top of that, we also take our cues of deciphering sounds - or in this case, words - from past experiences. It's as if we have a dictionary in our heads that we draw from, rather than thinking that it might be a new or less common word.

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So in the instance of Jimi Hendrix's "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" it's understandable why so many people think that link is "Excuse me while I kiss this guy". You're more likely to have come across the phrase, "I kiss this guy" than "I kiss the sky".

Funnily enough, though, while that is considered to be one of the most famous mondegreens, it didn't come up in a recent study about misheard lyrics. Although, perhaps that is the nature of a misheard lyric. The more well-known it gets, the less likely it is to be misheard.

But anyway, according to a recent study by Wordfinder (because of course someone is studying misheard lyrics) Enter Sandman by Metallica is the song most likely to trip people up. The survey found that 70 per cent of people hear "Exit light, enter night" as "Eggs and light, end all nights" (which proves that we don't need lyrics to make sense, they just need to sound good).

And then there is the mondegreen that fooled the entire world except for one American radio station.

It came out last year that Lady Gaga's 2008 song, Poker Face, doesn't just say "P-p-p-poker face" on repeat during the chorus. For every "P-p-p-poker face" there is an "f-f-f*** her face" that follows. And reportedly only one radio station in the entire world censored it accordingly.

Now be honest, how many of you also have been singing the wrong (but much more PG) lyrics all of these years?

But I think there's something special about misheard lyrics. It's not a matter of being right or wrong in the words you sing along with, but the thought processes that they invoke. The time spent wondering about pecan boats and a guy called Tom, who just happens to be perfect. And yes, Lady Mondegreen, who came to an untimely death alongside the Earl of Murray.

It's the moment of creativity that you didn't even realise that you were doing. And who knows? Maybe one day these misheard lyrics will produce their song, which no doubt will have one or two mondegreens of their own.

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