songs

When I was 6 or 7, I really liked the duet "Perhaps Love" by John Denver and Placido Domingo, just that at that time, I didn't know it was Denver and Domingo. I used to think a) it was 3 people singing and b) that those were the 3 knights from the "Neverending Story" by Michael Ende (which was also among my favorite books at that time). I always imagined how they would ride around all day fighting enemies and at night sit at the campfire to sing this song together. Those were the days. ;)

Lunaticat

When I was little, I loved Amy Grant. She had a song that said "he had the biggest King James you've ever seen." All along, I thought that meant he had the biggest penis you'd ever seen. I had no idea it was referring to the King James version of the Bible.

Christian music misunderstanding

i used to believe that the rain rain go away song went like this:

rain rain go away
come again another day
little jojie wants to play!

I believed that everyone sang it using my name and that I was special because of it :)

Hated the day when I realized that every parent replaces the name part with their kid's names.

Jojie

When I was little, I used to come up with pictures in my head whenever I heard a certain song. Well, whenever someone sang "Home, Home on the Range" for some odd reason I would picture a giant toilet with wheels on the bottom of it in the middle of a farm.

Sailor Nightcrawler

i used to think the air guitar was a real instument

allen

I used to think Chevy Chase sang that "You Can Call Me Al Song" but it really just looked that way in the cideo. In reality it was the little guy playing the instruments who actually sang it, Paul Simon. Don't I feel dumb.

Jeff

I used to believe that "No woman, no cry" by Bob Marley, meant that being single was the path to happiness instead of being words of comfort.

Dominic

I was born into a musical family, so I was raised on classical music and oldies. I had never really heard any music that was made past the 80s until I was 9. I thought that there wasn't any new music past 1985, and I grew up in the 90s!

Anon

When I was younger I got this purple cassestte/cd player. And finally got my first cd. Well, I thought everytime you put in a cassette or cd the singers would RUN to the recording studio to sing it live for you. Sometimes I felt bad about playing my music late at night or all night while I slept because I thought the people stayed there all night.

Stephanie

Up until I was about seven years old, I believed that guitars were called "dox-a-dangs." My parents never corrected me. I had to learn the real name on my own.

Anon

When I ws little I thought the Stevie Wonder song "Isn't she lovely" was all about me and my dad had got him to write it for us. And the gurgling at the beginning was me. I think it started because soemone made my dad a mix tape and said "this song is especially for Tata" on the tape before it came on.

I was very disappointed when I found out it wasn't.

Tata

A college roommate of mine once admitted to me that he used to think the song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was written about the Lucy character from "Peanuts" comic strips.

toon

Around the first time I ever knew of anybody playing a cello, I thought that instrument was invented for violinists who had played so long as to wear out their chin and shoulder and therefore could no longer hold a violin in the normal position for any length of time. A cello was essentially the same instrument, I thought, designed to rest on the floor so they could continue to play it after their chin and shoulder were worn out. I hadn't yet learned back then about different sized instruments having different pitch ranges.

Greg

When I was a kid my grandmother always sang the line "Ghost riders in the sky". I used to look at the sky, thinking I would actually see ghost cowboys on ghost horses, riding as if they were on the ground. Then I changed to think the Ghost Riders were the stars. To this day I still don't know the song or artist, and now, even though I'm 20, when I think of that line, I always look to the sky. I think more out of habit now, than actually looking to see them.

Skye

One day in the car Aretha Franklin's song "Respect" was on the radio and my mom said that it was the song by the svatsas(yiddish word for black people) For a little while I thought that the svatsas was the name of the group who sang the song.

Glowworm

ok this is really sad but until i read here i thought conductors of orchesters did tell the musicians what notes to play? what do they really do?

Anon

When I was a kid, my parents would only listen to folk or classical music, but never jazz. The only place I could hear jazz was in the local supermarket, as a background music. So when we'd accidentaly hear any jazz music on the radio, my brother and me would go: "hey, listen, that's the music from the supermarket!".

Denis

When I was little my family had a record player and I just did not understand how music came from it, so I thought there were many versions of singers like Elton John, Oliva Newton John and other people in the record singing for the big ones in real life.

Al Strickland

When I was younger, I used to watch music videos, which were typically just spliced together concert footage. Eventually I saw one with a story and they had a dramatic shot where the lyrics kept going but the singer stopped singing, and then for a while I was convinced that singers had to be ventriloquists and they only moved their mouths to help everyone else learn the words, too. Then I saw a video where there were a bunch of jump cuts where the singer had on different outfits (so the singer was in a new outfit every two seconds but you never saw them change). That one had me stumped for weeks.

Anon

Until my late teens, i believed the air guitar was a kind of electric guitar powered by air. But I was ashamed to ask my friends, they'd think I was not "in" if I didn't know this cool instrument.

jane