You know how you listen to a song for years, belting out every line you think you know by heart, until one day, someone turns your world upside down by correcting you with the actual lyrics? There’s a word for that. “Mondegreen” is when you mishear or misinterpret words, creating a new meaning. Sometimes the switcheroos make sense, and other times they create confusion, but we roll with it anyway because we like the beat and don’t always have the time to pull the lyrics up on the internet; and remember, back before AOL disks overflowed from our mailboxes, and Google was king, we couldn’t simply log on and look up the words. Today we’re amusing ourselves with some of the internet’s favorite mondegreens or misheard lyrics. We apologize in advance for taking your breath away by setting the record straight in case you didn’t know you were mishearing some of these lyrics.
Jason Waterfalls
You couldn’t miss TLC in the 90s, even if you tried. The superstar girl group dominated the airwaves with hit after hit, singing their sage advice on friends, lovers, and some guy named Jason. We never knew who he was or why they were so eager for him to stick to the rivers and lakes, but we loved it anyway.
Back in ’95, we couldn’t ask Siri to google the lyrics to make sure we heard things right, so many of us grew up confusing “chasing waterfalls” for “Jason Waterfalls.” In those days, you had to buy the album and check the microscopic print in the CD jacket if you wanted to look up the lyrics.