Misheard Lyrics -> Frequently Asked Questions
"What are misheard lyrics?"
and other Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The Questions
(clicking on a link brings you right to the question, or you can just scroll down).
- What are misheard lyrics?
- Where do you get these?
- There is no way somebody heard "XXX" in song "YYY"
- Someone is just making this stuff up
- Why aren't all the entries funny?
- Why aren't the correct lyrics, correct?
- Who reviews the submissions?
- How do I submit a misheard lyric?
- What happened to my misheard lyric I submitted?
- The misheard lyric I submitted was never even added to the new section!
- I made up a really funny lyric, can I send it to you?
- How do I submit a correction?
- How many misheard lyrics are there?
- What are your site statistics?
- How long have you been doing this?
The Answers
Q: What are misheard lyrics?
A: Misheard lyrics are portions of songs that people have misheard. Quite frequently, the lyrics to a song are not that easy to determine due to how it's sung. Hence, the mind wants to "fill in the blanks" for you.
Q: Where do you get these?
A: Misheard lyrics on the site, and in the daily content, are all supplied by visitors to amIright.com. The webmaster (Charles Grosvenor) reviews all the misheard lyrics submitted to the site every day, and tries to make them presentable for inclusion into the database.
Q: There is no way somebody heard "XXX" in song "YYY"
A: I can't personally guarantee a song is genuinely misheard. There are lots of instances where the mind fills in the blanks for people in ways you couldn't imagine. I try to filter out the "impossible" entries as much as possible, but even I'm willing to enter a submission if I consider it "possible".
Someone I know was debating how a song could be misheard when the title is the same as the misheard lyric. Simple, most radio DJs don't announce song titles, and not every song title matches a song lyric.
Q: Someone is just making this stuff up
A: If you're really hung up about wether a misheard lyric could really be misheard, and not made up, don't bother me with it. Really. Move on. At least once a week someone sends me a "People are just making stuff up and sending it in" type message. If you're really that put off, just do something else with your time, don't waste mine. I read these every day, because they make me laugh, regardless of wether they are made up or not. I actually DO try and filter the stuff I feel is made up, or ripped off from parody songs.
I don't really know why anyone would intentionally try to make something up to add to the database. I don't save anyone's names for the archive, no one is getting a star next to a user profile or something once they have submitted over a hundred submissions or something. So why would anyone make something up? Beats me.
Q: Why aren't all the entries funny?
A: Not every misheard lyric is drop dead funny. We try to purge entries that aren't very funny, but humor is very subjective, so not everything is going to make you laugh.
We find entries can be funny in the context of the lyrics of a song, and how the meaning of the lyrics can be significantly altered by the changing of just one word.
Q: Why aren't the correct lyrics, correct?
A: Since the web community supplies both "incorrect" and "correct" lyrics, quite frequently, there are incorrect lyrics still supplied for the correct lyrics.
The webmaster makes his best attempt to make sure the lyrics are correct. Verifying every single submission would be extremely time consuming, and would probably result in submissions being added less often.
An incorrect "correct" lyric doesn't make a misheard lyric any less funny, so there shouldn't be any harm.
Q: How do I submit a misheard lyric?
A: At the bottom of the misheard lyrics pages, follow the "Submit a Misheard Lyric" link.
Q: What happened to my misheard lyric I submitted?
A: In order to place lyrics on the site as quick as possible, I do two passes.
- The first pass, is to make sure the misheard lyric has all the info (decade, song name, band name) and that the lyrics are appropriate, funny, etc. I also try to make sure everything is properly cleaned up.
- The second pass, is to move the new misheard lyrics that have been placed into the new section, into the archive. At this point, I assign a sort name (ie. Def Leppard is Def Leppard, Ian Dury, would become Dury Ian), I make sure the name is spelt correctly, and I make sure it doesn't already exist in the database. Since this is a very time consuming step, I usually do it once a month (more like once every other month now).
Misheard lyrics with stories, are treated differently. Since every story is unique on submission, if I accept the misheard lyrics and the story, the story appears in the story archive right away.
Q: The misheard lyric I submitted was never even added to the new section!
A: I get a lot of duplicate submissions, sometimes enough information isn't sent in with a misheard lyric, or sometimes I consider the misheard lyrics just too damn vulgar to put on the site. I know some sites require a lyric to be "funny", but I don't really try to rate humour. I'm much too jaded after processing 50 or 60 submissions a day to find much overly funny (a disadvantage to running the site I'm afraid), so I leave it up to the person reading the entries to determine what they find funny.
Q: I made up a really funny lyric, can I send it to you?
A: I maintain a Parody Collection which is made up of complete songs. I also accept fragments of a song if you don't want to write an entire song parody.
Q: Who reviews the submissions?
A: While it was on inthe80s and for the first year or two of amiright, ChuckyG did. Now every entry is reviewed by IndyGent. IndyGent is one of the many editors that help review new material before it's added to the site. This keeps spam off most of the pages.
Q: How do I submit a correction?
A: I perform two rounds of validation of new submissions. Anything in the "new" section is generally "close but not complete." So I only want corrections when they are found in the archives of the website. Every page in the archive has a "Correction" link on it to submit corrections.
Q: How many misheard lyrics are there?
A: amIright generally receives around 60 submissions a day. Over 1,000 a month are generally accepted into inclusion in the site. The main archive is well over 90,000 entries at this point. I have no idea how much bigger the site could become. It was at 10,000 when this FAQ was first written in February 2001.
Q: What are your site statistics?
A: Page views are around 80,000 a day as of June 2006.
Q: How long have you been doing this?
A: I started these as a small portion on my 80s site (then called ChuckyG's 80s page) in 1996. In April of 2000, I decided to move them to a seperate site and better organize the collection. The collection was doubling in size every four months as a part of inthe80s.com. Since the collection is now seperate, and easier to maintain, it gets updated much more often.