Mondegreen
Andrew Fenner
What the hell,
you may inquire, is a mondegreen? It is, in fact, the unofficial term for misheard song lyrics, and was coined way back in the fifties. The most famous of these is, of course, “S‘cuse me while I kiss this guy!”, from Jimi Hendrix’ “Purple Haze”, or perhaps the entire song “Louie Louie”, which was long rumored to have the the “F” word in it somewhere amid its wildly slurred vocals. At any rate, there are thousands of ’em, and goth and other darkambient genres are as blessed in this regard as any.
One of my own current favorite songs, for example, is the enchanting “Dulcinea”, by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, and I don’t know yet what any of the lyrics are. I am not even sure there are lyrics other than the occasional “dadaDa” and the name Dulcinea intoned so beautifully. Every time I listen to the song I get a different take on the few lines that sound like a verse of some kind: “Don’t let your love blind you” or “Come let your love define you” or “Unless your love bind you”; I am uncertain. I am sure the word “love” is in there somewhere. The lyric is not in the cd liner, but thank’s to Sam’s apt description of the piece I have a good idea of what it represents, and listen to it mesmerized every time.
Another example from my listening experience is the line: “Yeah, he was a big landowner... ” that begins the song “Trenchmouth”, by Rasputina. I hear it as “...he was a picklin’ donor”. Heh, heh... wonder what that could mean? While we are speaking of Rasputina, what in Pluto’s mad kingdom is Melora singing at the beginning of “Leechwife”, right after “All dressed in white” and before “the future,the future”?
Also, for some Agniezka reason, when speaking of Rasputina, Cranes come to mind. They are a veritable plethora of ramified possibility where deciphering the lyrics is concerned. The singer’s role in that band seems almost to be more that of another instrument interacting within the overall sound; as a prominent aspect of ambient texture, rather than as a conveyor of mere verbal meaning. This gives the vocals an incredibly persuasive “power of suggestion” which may actually rely on the audience not quite being able to make out the words. There are lyrics though, and her writing is often quite touching and beautiful, as in “Lilies”. Nevertheless, this is fertile ground for comic mondegreens and I have been provided with a couple of examples:
If you listen to The Cranes “Starblood” (on Wings of Joy) the beginning sounds like: “she lives, she lives in Piscataway...” and in the middle: “baked beans, bakes beans” or: “she ate fleas, she ate fleas”.
I haven’t found any genuine Cranes ones myself, as I tend to become enthralled with the way Alison’s voice vectors my attention musically, almost as if it were punctuation for some higher “language”, but I listened to Wings of Joy after getting these misread tidbits and heard the mondemonster rearing its head alright. In fact I now hear “she lives in Piscataway” in a couple of other songs as well!
Yet another example from my vast repertoire of mangled meanings, while watching a video stream from a 1998 Chicago concert by My Scarlet Life at Rolling Stone, I manage to get all manner of misreads from certain passages. And this with the singer in front of me mouthing the words!
To depart from my own mistakes and venture into more fertile territory, Mistress M tells of a tantalizing mondegreen on Depeche Mode’s Violator album:
Instead of: “your own, personal, Jesus... someone to hear your prayers” it becomes: “your own, personal, Jesus... someone to feel your breasts”.
She mentioned this suggestive mishearing to a Montclair student who came back later with this response, and apparently mondegreens can be contagious:
“The image of hands running over cleavage, for example, now fills my mind when replaying Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus,’ but despite the error it is a pleasing effect, in an odd and surreal way. It may be entirely probable that this effect was one that was central to the listener’s mind so that in a strange and subtle psychologizing way, he or she would have, by misconceiving, have actually improved (if only on an internal level) the song!”
Which brings us to an interesting question. How many artists do this on purpose as extension of songwriting technique; an intentional use of the mondegreen as gasp art? A literary example would be the writer, James Joyce. Once, in his youth in Victorian era Ireland, he made a bet with friends that he would use the word “arse” in public and onstage at a prissy event he was required to participate in. For his part in the program he was to read poetry accompanied by a cellist.
He transformed the lines: “Her lover lies fallen on far foreign shores, and suitors around her are sighing...” into “and suitors around her arse eyeing...”. The cellist nearly fell on the floor.
An example from pop music might be Bob Dylan intentionally using the words “suck cess” in place of “success” in “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. It is common knowledge that in the 50’s and early 60’s there was still such censorship of song lyrics that artists often resorted to innuendo to slip nasty stuff past the censors. As an example, in the song “Runaround Sue”, the singer says: “People let me put you wise, Sue goes!... deliberate pause...out with other guys.” The average, horny teenage guy with his post-pubescent woody knew exactly what was meant... Sue goes!
To get back to more gothly material, and back to one of my favorite bands as well, I think Melora Creager does this same thing in the aforementioned “Trenchmouth” with her brief pause in the line:
“He wore a trenchcoat, and he waved the dick ...see flag.” It seems intentional anyway, but it could be just me... maybe I am a pervert.
Along these lines of purposeful mondegreen as viable extension of art, Rasputina’s song “Leechwife” seems to intentionally slur the word “leechcraft” a couple of times to make it sound like “witchcraft”. It has just the wickedly eerie effect desired.
Now I would certainly be remiss not to mention the Cocteau Twins in this area, since they are one group who frequently abuses clarity for the sake of effect. Even such song titles as “Musette and Drums” or “Feathers-Oar-Blades” or “Serpentskirt”, with it’s wonderful non-lyrics, have a built in mondegreen-like aspect. If you visit their official home page, cocteautwins.com you will find “She thinks that people should take advantage of not being able to understand or decipher her lyrics. Their lyrics, or lack thereof have generated much debate over the years.”
Another section explains that some of her lyrics are just random phrases in Latin or some other obscure language and that some of them are even words she simply makes up on the spot. They have successfully brought language to a place beyond itself from where it seems able to communicate more than mere words ever could, restoring to music its naturally abstract nature and its true power to communicate.
All in all, whether or not the mondegreen can be used as a valid constituent of artistic process, the unintentional ones are a lot of fun. Here are some links to dedicated mondegreen sites on the internet. Not much in the way of ethereal bands I’m afraid, but some of them are a scream.
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