Mondegreens happen in Japan too, especially when Japanese audiences are listening to English-language lyrics. For example, the memetic Numa Numa song is associated with drinking in Japan, since the “noma” in the line “Noma! Noma! Yay!” sounds like nomu (the Japanese word for “drink”).
But what about if you want to create that lyrical ambiguity for yourself? Canadian-Japanese band Monkey Majik has tackled this twisty challenge for themselves with their new jam, titled “Ryugakusei.” Or maybe it’s “You Gotta Stay.” It’s a little hard to tell.
They recruited one of the most capable multilingual mouths in music, Taiiku Okazaki. As Okazaki has a deft hand (or tongue?) for making his Japanese sound like other languages, he was a perfect fit for this mind-bending song.
The video starts with Maynard and Blaise Plant of Monkey Majik meeting in a bar, where they have a hilariously circuitous conversation in English (the Japanese subtitles read “Genki? Genki. Genki? Genki. …Genki?“) and then reminisce about a wild night with Okazaki.
The gang then proceed to sing what sounds like a syrupy love song in English, but the Japanese lyrics tell another story.Lyrics, misheard ones and their translations under the cut:
(via dollsahoy)
