Do you like ‘Enter Sandman’? Of course you do. Do you understand the Metallica anthem’s lyrics though? According to new research, you might not.
As per Louder Sound, a new study by WordFinder discovered that there’s plenty of song lyrics that we all seem to misunderstand. WordFinder presented participants with over 1,000 snippets of various songs, and asked them to guess the lyrics based on a choice of just four phrases.
‘Enter Sandman’ was the winner (loser?), with over 70% of participants mishearing the lyrics “Exit light / Enter night”. The alternative guess was absolutely hilarious: “Eggs and light / End all nights” is definitely not what Lars Ulrich and co. had in mind when writing their hit.
Other hugely misunderstood songs included ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ by The Beatles (52%), ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis Presley (46%), and (unsurprisingly) Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (49%).
The study also discovered that ‘Enter Sandman’ was most commonly misheard by Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z individuals, and The Rolling Stones’ singer Mick Jagger was the artist people had most difficulty hearing properly, alongside Young Thug. You can check out the full WordFinder findings here.
There’s actually a term for what happens when someone mishears songs lyrics: “mondegreen” means “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung.” Keep that one in your locker for your next pub trivia night.
‘Enter Sandman’ was the lead single from Metallica’s self-titled fifth album in 1991. James Hatfield wrote the lyrics, focusing on the concept of a child’s nightmares. One of the heavy metal icon’s most popular songs, it’s since been covered and used by the likes of Mac DeMarco, the Virginia Tech Hokies football team and, um, interrogators during the Invasion of Iraq.
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See if you can understand the lyrics to ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica:
