Do you remember the song "Is She Really Going Out With Him" by Joe Jackson?

For 40 years I thought the opening lyric was "Pretty women out walking with guerrillas down my street", but today (Joe Jackson's 65th birthday) I discovered from the Internet that he actually sings "Pretty women out walking with [b]gorillas[/b] down my street". Why would a pretty woman want to walk down the street with a giant ape? Was Joe Jackson on some kind of hallucinatory drugs when he wrote the song?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8PScDbLdeQ]

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LeopoldBloom · M

These are called "mondegreens" after an old Scottish poem with the line something like "they killed the Earl o' Moray, and laid him on the green" meaning on the lawn, but people heard it as "they killed the Earl o' Moray, and Lady Mondegreen" which actually makes more sense. A well-known example is in "Purple Haze" where Jimi Hendrix sings "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" but people hear it as "'scuse me while I kiss this guy."

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Anonymartyr · M

@LeopoldBloom Hahaha, I missed that Hendrix one! But I clearly hear that when I think about it now.

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