Oliver: What if your misheard lyric makes more sense for the TV ad?

“Have you seen the commercial on TV that uses one of Pete’s songs?” my dear friend Carol began.

“Pete?” I replied confusedly. She likes to do this to me, this assumption that I know exactly what she’s talking about. Though, usually I do. But not this time.

“Pete Seeger,” she said.

Carol, you see, is up on her folk songs. After all, her husband was a folk musician of some note in the Chicago area and actually knew Mr. Seeger.

I asked which commercial it was, and she wasn’t sure what they were selling. So I promised that I’d look out for it. Turns out it was a Volvo commercial. It follows a couple from the birth of their child to some point when the Volvo’s technology keeps the family safe.

The song is clearly by Seeger, and I recognized the voice immediately. I will admit, however, that I’m not all that familiar with his song catalog.

“Every mornin’ at half-past four / You hear the cooks hop on the floor,” the song begins.

To me, it sounded like a song about how hard mornings are, to which any family can attest.

When I heard the next line, however, what I heard was this: “It’s hard times in the middle, my love / Hard times in the middle.”

In my mind, it all made sense. Clearly this was a song about the “middle” years of life when people start having children. Childhood is the first part and old age is the last part.

The next line continues the theme: “Every mornin’ right at six, / Don’t that ol’ bell make you sick / Hard times in the middle, my love / Hard times in the middle.”

Brilliant pick of a song, Volvo. Well done.

When I finally remembered to mention to Carol that I had heard the Seeger song, she busted out laughing at me. “It’s ‘Hard Times in the Mill,’” she said, correcting my obvious mistake.

Skeptical, I hopped on my computer and looked it up.

Yep, the actual line: “It’s hard times in the mill, my love / Hard times in the mill.”

“Well, that’s silly. What has a mill got to do with being a parent?” I scoffed.

Now, if I had stopped to think about it, Seeger was a protest singer and often wrote about the hard conditions many workers labored under. A glance at the rest of the actual song confirms that.

I have to admit that I still have a hard time hearing it the correct way, since I’m pretty sure my way works better for the commercial.

Then I remembered that advertisers sometimes really don’t want you to know the original song because that might get in the way of the message they are trying to convey.

For instance, a few years back there was an ad for the upcoming National Football League season and they used a song that had the catchy chorus of “Every day is like Sunday.”

Great line. Works well if you take it only that far. Football, for the most part, is played on Sundays and football fans would love to have every day be Sunday.

Only problem is, those of us who are fans of the artist who wrote the song, Morrissey, know that the song actually is about nuclear war. The very next line is “Every day is silent and grey.” It also includes a line that proclaims “Come, come, come, nuclear bomb.”

Every time I saw the commercial, I’d have a good chuckle. Still, it is a catchy tune.

Reflecting on my Pete Seeger lyric mistake, I know that I’m not the first person to mishear a line, nor will I be the last. At least I’m not the guy who heard Jimi Hendrix’s “excuse me while I kiss the sky” as “excuse me while I kiss this guy.”