The comedy show The Vacant Lot built an entire skit, called "Blinded by the Light", around four friends arguing about the lyrics. " Blinded by the Light," a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song by the Manfred Mann's Earth Band (for which they rewrote the lyric in the chorus), contains what has been called "probably the most misheard lyric of all-time": "revved up like a deuce" is frequently misheard as "wrapped up like a douche". This issue gained publicity in 2010 over multiple errors claimed in lyrics printed in the Anthology of Rap, printed by Yale University Press. Rap and hip-hop lyrics may be particularly susceptible to being misheard because they are often improvised and frequently lack an official, written version.
Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a folk song repeated in a country where people are unfamiliar with some of the references in the song will often be transformed. Since time immemorial, songs have been passed on by word of mouth. Although people have no doubt misconstrued song lyrics for as long as songs have been sung, without improved communication and the standardization of language which accompanies it, there would have been no way for this shared experience to have been recognized and discussed. James Gleick says that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. On the other hand, Steven Pinker has observed that "The interesting thing about mondegreens is that the mishearings are generally less plausible than the intended lyrics." For example, in everyday speech, one would be more likely to hear somebody recalling how they "kissed this guy" than that they were about to "kiss the sky". We are more likely to see or hear what we expect to see or hear than something completely unexpected, or something that is not part of our normal everyday experiences. Human beings perceive in part based on past experiences, including what words we hear. The wild, strange battle cry " Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward." ("Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward," from " The Charge of the Light Brigade").Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life ("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm 23) Wright explained the need for a new term: The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original. The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands, Oh, where hae ye been? They hae slain the Earl O' Moray, And Lady Mondegreen. She wrote: When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O'Moray".
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