Top Ten Songs with Mistakes that Were Left in the Final Version
Most of the time, musicians strive for perfection, and in a modern world rife with Pro Tools, pitch correction, and quantization, record executives place more emphasis on having every little flaw nipped, tucked, and sewed. However, sometimes mistakes are left in, either accidentally or on purpose. Feel free to add more examples.
At the beginning of the song, you can hear Sting accidentally sitting down on a piano and laughing about his mistake.
Haha, yes. Sting said he hit the piano keys while trying to cover up a fart.
The backing vocals in the first line of the chorus are off by a syllable from the lead vocals.
You can hear Michael Stipe laughing in the chorus after he sings the line about Dr. Seuss. Apparently, he always pronounced it as "Dr. Zeus", and he tried to get it right when they recorded it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), he couldn't pull it off with a straight face.
You can hear Jimmy Page flub the intro and start over.
When the whole band drops out in the middle, vocalist Cindy Wilson shouts "Tin roof! Rusted!" She came in early, but the band liked the way it sounded, so they kept it.
Jack Ely, the lead singer, says the word "see" too early, but the drummer manages to cover it up with a drum fill.
James says the opening phrase "My life is brilliant" twice. The first one is removed from radio edits.
The whole band gets off tempo during the third chorus, but they soon recover.
In the last verse of the song, Paul gets the lines mixed up, singing "Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face and in the evening she still sings it with the band." Apparently, he liked the way it sounded.
In the album version, you can hear Billie Joe Armstrong screw up the intro and say the f-word. They edited it out from the radio and music video versions (for obvious reasons).
He says "F***in' hell" in the background.
The studio recording of the song begins with the band starting to play early, and then stopping to start over. Before completely starting the song over, a short banter between some of the band members can be heard where someone asks if they're all ready, and if they should keep their mess-up in the recording.
Kurt Cobain starts off the third verse too early and sings the words "Polly said" before the verse starts (which actually starts with "Polly says" on top).
I added this one because he laughs when he says "Banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee."
Bob Dylan comes in late during the last verse, but the band is able to adjust. This has happened in a couple of other songs, too.
In the single version, Dahvie Vanity says in the spoken segment "develop an inability to not care about someone's opinion over you," which of course is a double negative. He must have realized his mistake, as on the album version, the "not" suddenly disappeared without further explanation.
