“BEELZEBUB HAS A DEVIL FOR A SON NAMED STEVE” AND OTHER KARAOKE DISASTERS

[defrog]

ITEM [via popfiend ]: A new study by Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, reveals why people mishear lyrics.

“Understanding speech can be difficult, especially when it’s noisy,” or overwhelmed by a loud music track, says Ma, whose study appeared in the March journal of Public Library of Science. “We found that this process can be helped a lot by looking at the speaker’s face. If you have only sound information, you will sometimes make mistakes. But if you also have the visual information, the brain will combine those two pieces and get a better sense of what’s being said.”

It makes sense, though it doesn’t explain why many people will mishear the lyrics in the same way. I suspect word-of-mouth plays a factor as well, where yr friend sings along to the song with the wrong words and you think that’s how the song goes.

Which is why punk rock invented the lyrics sheet.

FUN FACT: A misheard lyric is called a “mondegreen”.

READ MORE ABOUT IT: You can find mass collections of misheard lyrics at KissThisGuy.com and AmIRight.com – although surely some of them are just people trying to be funny.

Sing if you know the words,

This is dF