mondegreen: Elton John, The One
September 20, 2006From the very first line, I got it wrong. I thought it was ‘So you’re dancing out the ocean.’ It’s ‘I saw you dancing out the ocean.’ Next verse, ‘In the second that the hammer hits’, I heard ‘in the second that you have a hit’. Next verse, ‘Like freedom fields where wild horses run/When stars collide like you and I/No shadows block the sun.’
All these years (and thank god no one heard me), ‘Like freedom feels where wild horses run/Wind starts to glide like you and I/Though shadows block the sun.’ No wonder it never made sense. Because then it gets dark.
Fourth verse: it goes ‘Drunken nights in dark hotels.’ I sang, ‘Guns and knives in dark hotels.’ And then the grammar seemed to go bad in the last verse, ‘For each man in his time is cain’. I thought of it as either ‘is king’ or ‘is came’.
How long has this song been around? My bathroom tiles are terminally embarrassed.
