There've been a couple misunderstanding of lyrics that always seemed poignant to me. The uk surf version of The Pixies "Wave of Mutilation" was one of me and my mom's shared favorite songs when I was a teenager. One lyric goes:
I've kissed mermaids
Rode the El Nino
but my mom always misheard the lyrics as
I've kissed her legs
and once she told me she loved that line because it was so tender.
When I was heartbroken once in college, sad Otis Redding songs were all I wanted to listen to, and similarly, the lines I misheard were also my favorite lines. There's one verse that goes:
Honey, I saw you there last night
With another man's arms holding you tight
Nobody knows what I feel inside
All I know is I walked away and cried
and I always love the last line of that verse, which I thought was All I know is I want the way you cried.
