It's so easy today. If you can't understand a song lyric, you just Google it and there it is. Those of us who grew up with the music of the '60s and '70s didn't have that luxury. Add in the fact that the songs were played on vinyl and sometimes with scratches versus today's digital technology, it was sometimes decades before one could learn what the artist was actually saying in their songs. Here's a few that I couldn't figure out for years until the arrival of the internet.

1. Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds had the hit "Don't Pull Your Love." The actual line I couldn't understand was "I'd cry for a hundred years." Somehow I heard them singing I'd raffo a hundred years." I'd never heard of the word "raffo," but that's what I heard.

 

2. Jonathan Fred & His Playboys recorded "Judy in Disguise." It was years before I realized they weren't singing "Judy in the Skies."

 

3. The Clash had a hit in the '80s called "Rock the Casbah." I didn't really catch hardly any of the lyrics. The word "fundamental" is used in the song. For years I thought it sounded like "mental retardation" and I just couldn't see the term being used.

 

4. I bet I wasn't the only one who though Elton John sang "Lucy in the Sky with Dimes." It's actually "diamonds," but that's not what my ears heard.

 

5. One that really sticks in my mind is the song by England Dan and John Ford Coley, "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight." I remember they actually had a discussion on the radio when it was a hit trying to figure out the line "I'm not talkin about the movin in." I recall one of the guesses was that they were singing "I'm not talkin about doin the linen." Once a person knows the actual lyric, you wonder how in the world one's ears can play tricks on them like that.

What were some of the songs you sang the wrong lyrics to for years?

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