#seriously TWNETY-FIVE YEARS i'd been thinking this

[rob-nobody]

Okay, so, I've had a few mondegreens in my life. Most I knew I was getting wrong, even if I didn't know the correct lyrics and couldn't be bothered to look them up — I didn't really think Paula Cole was asking "Where is my John Wayne, where is my furry sock," or that Steve Winwood wanted you to bring him a "pie of love," though I maintain my versions are better — and I was in my 20s when I realized the Marshall Tucker Band wasn't singing about a "purdy little love song."

But my best one is this. Maybe a year ago, my wife and I were watching TV, and a commercial came on using the Tim McGraw song "I Like It, I Love It," and I said "Huh, that's a really dirty song to use in a commercial like this." My wife said something noncommittal, so I pressed on. "I mean, it's about pussy, right?"

"...what?"

"Yeah, I mean... 'Don't know what it is 'bout that little girl's oven, but I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.' That has to be about her pussy, right? I mean, he's not singing about her baking."

"...lovin'. That little girl's lovin'."

"WHAT."

I distinctly remember hearing that song on the bus in high school and thinking "Wow, what a dirty song," and for the past twenty-five years or so, I'd been thinking that Tim McGraw was singing about how much he liked, loved, and wanted more of his girlfriend's pussy.

But here's the thing! That song helped make me aware of sexist and racist double standards in the music industry. Any time I would hear criticism (usually by white men) about the sexual content in a song by a black hip-hop artist, or by a woman, or both, I would think "Oh sure, Lizzo gets flack for singing about her WAP, but a good ol' white country boy sings about wanting more of his girl's 'oven' and nobody says a word!" Which, ultimately, is a correct conclusion to come to for completely incorrect reasons.

And of course, I can't help but wonder... what else am I still getting wrong?

[image description: Medieval portrait of a black-haired woman in green robes with gold embroidery and a red wax seal at her breast stands with her hands clasped. Behind her, a blotter-green field calligraphed with ancient gold words too faint and jumbled to be understood, save for the number 256. Text reads, “Lady Mondegreen small god of mis-heard lyrics”]

• • • • •

Oh, she’s a tricky one, that Lady Mondegreen.

She’ll tell you she’s a tuxedo.  She’ll tell you there’s a bathroom on the right.  She’ll burn the trees off every lawn, and she knows the rumor in the night.  She changes the meaning—she’s not the god of eggcorns, after all—but she doesn’t do it maliciously, and she was born within her own domain.

For once there was a man, the bonny Earl of Moray, and another believed that he conspired against the king.  To prove himself, that other conspired against the earl, until one day he killed him, ran him through and laid him on the green.  And as a king is the land, he bled into the soil, until it welcomed him home, until it loved him like a lady.

Until a girl named Sylvia Wright heard that they had slain the Earl of Moray, and the Lady Mondegreen.  She carried the lady in her heart her whole life, refusing to hear talk of other lyrics, of less romantic ends, and she spoke of her often, she spread her gospel until all misheard lyrics whose meanings changed became the domain of the Lady Mondegreen.  Her rule stretches further than the earl’s does, in this modern world; she is brighter, and better remembered.

She may not always be understood, but she is always bright, and beautiful, and beloved.  She’s very old, but her current form is very new, spoke for less than a hundred years.

Long may she rain, and wrong may she reign.