Top 10 Music Examples of the Mandela Effect

The second single from OutKast’s fourth album “Stankonia”, “Ms. Jackson” became a bona fide hit when it was released in 2000. However, quite a few people still find it hard to believe that the song hadn’t been around long before then. One Reddit user from the UK once wrote about singing the song back in the ‘90s at their primary school teacher who was called Mrs Jackson. Another recalled just how popular the song seemingly was from their college days - in the early ‘90s. Well, if they were saying “Forever, ever?” and crooning “I am for real…” before the year 2000, then it certainly wasn’t because of “Ms. Jackson”.

As part of one of the best-selling albums of all time, "How Deep Is Your Love" is a song many of us have heard a lot. So much so that we probably think we know the chorus as well as you think you know your ABCs. Well, think again because there's a good chance you've been singing the “Saturday Night Fever” single wrong! The chorus begins with the repeated question of "How deep is your love?" followed by "I really mean to learn". You know, as opposed to "I really need to know" as so many of us have been belting out for all these years?! It might sound odd at first, but in the end we appreciate the desire to understand the subject’s feelings rather than the desperate need for narcissistic validation.

Inspired by Billy Joel’s life, “Piano Man” tells the story of a musician playing at a bar, and the people he encounters. For years, many people sang along to the song thinking the line in the first verse was “Son can you play me a melody?”. While that may sound right, it only proves that most of us aren’t talented lyricists. But Joel is and his version is much more interesting and thought-provoking. Rather than asking for a melody, the man “makin’ love to his tonic and gin” asks Billy if he can play him a “memory”. Just goes to show how much weight a single word can hold.

In her 1981 cover of the Arrows’ song “I Love Rock 'n' Roll”, Joan Jett opens with a line that is now the source of a lot of confusion. Jett sings about seeing a guy by the record machine, sure. But not a lot of people agree on what said dude is doing there. There are plenty who will swear he’s just standing by it, while in truth, the lyrics make it clear that she “saw him dancin' there by the record machine”. To be fair, if your memory of the song is via the official music video then you could be forgiven - since what the guy is doing looks more like the former than the latter.

Given the simplicity of the lyrics to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”, it’s probably hard to imagine that you’ve been getting it wrong all these years. But rest assured, at least some of you have been. While singing along to the cheesy, ultra-shimmery chorus, some of us may have been belting out “I'm a Barbie girl, in A Barbie world”. Well, if you’re one of such people, you may be surprised to learn that the song actually refers to the plastic utopia as “THE Barbie world”. This implies that rather than it being one of many, our titular girl inhabits the only Barbie world that exists. Isn’t that just fantastic?

As the theme song for the cultural giant “Friends”, many of us heard “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts almost every week for 10 years. So it’s pretty safe to say that we would know the lyrics like the back of our hand, right? “Your love life's DOA”, “Stuck in second gear” - it’s all as much a part of our pop culture lexicon as “How you Doin’?” and “We were on a break”. But let us ask you one question. In the chorus, is the response to “I’ll be there for you” - “When the rain starts to fall” or “When the rain starts to pour”? If you said “fall”, you could not be more wrong.

Okay, get ready, because we’re about to blow your mind! Or at least the part that grew up watching “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. One of the most popular songs from the classic Disney film is “Heigh-Ho”, sung by those seven little men holding onto their work gear. But you know the part in the chorus when they sing, “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go”? Turns out you may not know that part quite as well as you think, because the actual lyrics are almost the exact opposite. Rather than Heigh-Ho-ing to work, the dwarfs are Heigh-Ho-ing home from work. Mind blown, right?!

You would think that it wouldn’t be such a big deal whether a song was released in 2007 or 2009. But when it comes to “Boom Boom Pow” by Black Eyed Peas, it’s a big enough issue that there’s even a reddit thread solely focused on that one question because of a particular lyric in the track. In the thread, quite a lot of people claim to remember listening to the track in 2007 - even though it wasn’t released until March of 2009. Many others were also shocked to learn that said lyric is actually “I’m so 3008” instead of 2008. Regardless of what your memories are, can we at least agree that mocking someone by calling them “2000 and late” makes more sense in 2009 than in 2007?

This one can easily be understood given how people speak when referencing a band. For example, saying “The Eagles’ best album is ‘Hotel California’” or, “‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by The Ramones is a kick ass song” just flows better in conversation. However, the fact remains that neither band has a “the” in their name. Go ahead, pull out your albums, cassettes and CDs and see for yourself. Are you desperate for a real “the” now? Well, if you flip through your Pink Floyd albums, you’ll find one where you might have forgotten a “the” exists. No, they aren’t ‘The’ Pink Floyd, but their 8th studio album is actually called “THE Dark Side of the Moon”. Confused? Well, so were we.

Sounds like a silly question, right? But you may be surprised to find out that it ends a little differently than you think. The classic rock tune finishes on a high, with Freddie Mercury belting out: “No time for losers/'Cause we are the champions”. But if you find yourself asking “isn’t there an ‘...of the world’ at the end there?” Then you wouldn’t be alone. Although, you would, also, be wrong because the actual song concludes just like that. However, it seems Freddie also felt like something was missing, as he threw in the “of the world” coda during the 1985 Live Aid concert. That could explain why this false ending has become our ingrained recollection of the track.