When I first listened to Hamilton, I heard, “I remember those salty boys trippin’ over themselves just to win our praise.” My daughter asked me how that even made sense, and I told her I thought they were sailors.
For the longest time, I thought the line from Sonya and Natasha in Great Comet was “I hate you! You’re my enemy forever! I burst into song.”
Thanks to Lea Salonga's crystal-clear diction in her Sydney Opera House concert, I realized I had been hearing this lyric in "Children Will Listen" wrong for years:
What do you leave to your child when you're dead?
Only whatever you put in its head.
I always heard it as:
What do you leave to your child when you're dead?
Only one avenue put in its head.
I'm sending pictures of the most amazing trees/You'll be obsessed with all my forest expertise
From Phantom (though this only applies to the original cast recording, as the lyric has since been rewritten). I spent some time in my youth confused why Raoul was calling Christine a b*tch in "Think of Me." I didn't learn the reality until I got the double CD (not my dubbed cassettes from the library) and could check the lyrics.
Raoul: What a change You're really not a b*tch The gawkish girl that once I knew