He's Got the Whole World in His Pants
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music
He's Got the Whole World in His Pants Details
Review One of the funniest music books to appear in 1996 was this collection, which will be a solid and ongoing laugh for any who've long listened to music lyrics and misunderstood them. Misheard lyrics and blunders are presented in an engaging collection spiced with cartoons. Familiarity with contemporary rock is a 'must' for appreciation of many of these contemporary jingles. -- Midwest Book Review Read more From the Publisher SAY WHAT? You're driving down a clean strech of highway. The radio's blaring your favorite Elvis song. Life is good, you think, as you belt out "people love bagels" as loud as you can. So what if your best friend insists it's really "Viva Las Vegas"? The contagiously popular 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy hit a real chord with music lovers everywhere-hundreds of fans wrote to Gavin Edwards, clamoring for more misheard lyrics and offering their own aural blunders. He's Got the Whole World in His Pants brings you more of the best that today's-and yesterday's-artists have to offer. From traditional folk songs to cutting-edge rock, He's Got the Whole World in His Pants features the funniest and most popular misheard lyrics, including: "The cross-eyed baby that you gave to me" ("The cross I bear that you gave to me"-Alanis Morissette) "I want a piece of date bread" ("I wanna be sedated"-The Ramones) "Someone shaved my wife tonight" ("Someone saved my life tonight"-Elton John) and the famously incomprehensible "Louie Louie" (look it up-it's in here). Read more
Reviews
Have you ever had the experience of discovering, after years of hearing a song, that you were seriously mistaken as to what the lyrics were? This is a common experience, dubbed a "mondegreen" by this author, who had always, when hearing an old Irish ballad that spoke of the hero dying "and they laid him on the green" as "and Lady Mondregreen" (presumably, his lover, who died with him.) This book is a compendium of misheard lyrics sent to the author by various readers. Some of them are hilarious (from Annie Lennox, "It feels just like I'm walking on propane gas" instead of "...walking on broken glass", for instance.) But far too many of them are just nowhere near as funny, and/or incomprehensible how anybody could manage to mangle then lyrics into the form given. The book's good for more than a few chuckles and just a few laugh-out-louds, but overall I have to say I was disappointed.