Vol. 07 · Misheard ·1953
"Hold me like a river."
That isn't the lyric.
What you hear
"Hold me like a river."
What's actually sung
"Cry me a river." Cry Me a River — Justin Timberlake / Ella Fitzgerald / many (1953)
Why the ear defaults
The idiom "cry me a river" (= shed many tears for me) is unusual. The ear reaches for the more common verb-object pairing and substitutes "hold."
Hear another line wrong?
Play the misheard duel — pick the real lyric, round by round.