The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172425   Message #4173442
Posted By: matt milton
30-May-23 - 05:38 AM
Thread Name: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
In the many excellent songwriting books by Pat Pattinson he points out that songs can get away with all sorts of false rhymes which the listener readily accepts.

I heard a pop song only the other day that rhymed "on" with "long" and the only reason I even noticed the false rhyme was because the lines themselves had good lyrics.

As songs are heard, not read, our ears usually don't notice or don't care. The example above - rhyming "bottle" with "swallow" is a good case in point.

The only thing that does bother me is when the rhyme is identical (in which case it can't really be said to be a rhyme). This rarely occurs, but it does occur in Ewan MacColl's 'Sweet Thames Flow Softly', in which the word 'standing' is rhymed with 'understanding'. That always mildly annoys me.