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Here is a youtube link the song in question Search and Destroy, released by the Stooges on the album Raw Power.

The web tells me the line is:

I'm a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm

But I always thought the line was:

I'm a streetwalking cheater with a hat full of napalm?

(On the track, he seems to pronounce it as "hat" requires a Boston accent if it's actually "heart"—Iggy is from Michigan;)

Q: Do the lyrics posted on the internet come from a textual source, such as liner notes, or is it possible inaccuracies have been introduced and codified by the internet?

Search and Destroy Lyrics as posted on the internet

DukeZhou
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1 Answers1

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It's "I'm a streetwalking cheetah", and "heart full of napalm", as per this interview with Iggy Pop from Please Kill Me: The Uncensored History of Punk.

Iggy Pop says: "I used to walk around London, through the park and stuff, with this leopard jacket I had, a cheetah-skin jacket actually- it had a big cheetah on the back-and all the old men in London would drive by in their cars and they’d stop and try to cruise me. All I liked to do was walk around the streets with a heart full of napalm. I always thought Heart Full of Soul was a good song so I thought, What’s my heart full of? I decided it was basically full of napalm."

So the Internet is correct in their listing of the lyrics.

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    That explains the "street walking" part. Thanks for definitively answering this question that has been nagging me for some years now! – DukeZhou Aug 24 '17 at 18:55