worst rhyme ever

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 20 Sep 06 - 02:38 AM

I pretty much agree, Robbie.

I'm sick of certain overused, unimaginative, "easy" rhymes, such as
"I'll keep waiting,
Anticipating ... "

and bad grammar done just to force the rhyme, e.g.

"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
O no, no, no you can't disguise ... "

or "Hungry Eyes,
One look at you and I can't disguise ..."

(Disguise WHAT!!??)

or "Hungry Eyes,
I feel the magic between you and I ... "

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 05:46 AM

Tw'as there in the bakery
surrounded by fakery

As sung by E Clapton in " Sign Language"
( you talk o me in sign language
while I'm eating a sandwich"

It's not the sounds, tonal quality, matching syllables that make a crap rhyme it's the use of a completely inappropriate word in the context soley because it rhymes which makes the rhyme crap.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Joe_F
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 09:46 PM

He was a sawmill proprietor,
And she a young maid yet unkissed.
One evening he winked his glass eye at her,
But she said, "Nay, nay, sir! Desist!" -- "Vera"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Matt_R
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 06:10 PM

I like America, and yes, a lot of their songs have goofy lyrics. But most don't and are excellent.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 05:31 PM

The Hash (rugby, too?) version of "Bicycle Built for Two" has an extremely force one:

Daisy, Daisy! Give me your answer true
Daisy, Daisy! Wouldn't you like to screw
I really must beg your pardon
But I've got a helluva hard on
From beatin' my meat
Against the seat
Of a bicycle built for two

Obviously it needed a second verse for Daisy's reply. So I wrote one ... with just as bad a rhyme in the same place:

Henry, Henry! Here is your answer true.
I'd be crazy to jump in the sack with you
Your hard-on is so disgustin'
It's limp and has a crust on.
I wouldn't be pleased
To get a disease
From a bicycle built for two

Sorry, I know I'm sick and twisted! *BG*

BB,
NightWing

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Severn
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 04:41 PM

The members of America all met going to school in Britain, didn't they? A friend claims to have been to school with a few of them. Real Americans don't use English like that!


Uniformly horrible stuff. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as programmed by Reader's digest, but with bad grammar.


"Asta never gave nothin' to the Thin Man that Sir Galla hadn't already had", indeed.

...Or whatever the Hell that drivel was....

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 04:02 PM

Rhyming "mirror" with "cheer, beer, fear, tear etc is not so strange once you have watched any of Anne Maurice's "House Doctor" programmes.

"Well, Alasdair, we're going to put a huge meer above the mantelpiece to create the illusion of space "

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: 282RA
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 01:28 PM

Has anyone ever attempted to rhyme "postcard" with "coast guard"?

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: 282RA
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 01:16 PM

I think the band America was a study in horrible lyrics:

"I understand you've been running from a man who goes by the same of the sand man/
He rides the sky like an eagle in the eye of a hurricane that's abandoned"

I mean, come on! And that became a hit!

"I been through the desert on a horse with no name it felt good to be out of the rain/
In the desert you can't remember your name cuz there ain't no one for to give you no fame"

GAG!

"Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't, didn't already have/
And cause never was the reason for the evening or the Tropic of Sir Galahad"

Whaaaaaaaat???

Go through the lyrics of any America song, if you dare, it's all like that.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 12:56 PM

Good examples, Jim.

Let's not forget that it's been common in song and poetry for a long time to couple ending words that are SPELLED as though they'd rhyme but DON'T actually - at least not in contemporary practice.

E.g., we Yanks think nothing of pairing "rain" with "again," even though we who live south of the Canadian border don't pronounce them as rhyming words.

Going back to the Chris Williamson thing of "rhyming" the words "warrior" and "bore ya," while I think that may be the weakest line in "Song Of The Soul," the way Chris sings it -- the way most of us often talk -- it DOES rhyme.   

Leonard Cohen, for example, uses all sorts of 'rhyming slang' (and near-rhymes) all the way through his (IMO) masterpiece "Hallelujah! E.g., "before I knew ya," "someone who outdrew ya," etc.      

What did annoy me and grate on me is when some people reprinted Chris Williamson's lyrics as:
"Come to your life like a warrior.
Nothing will bore YER."   
Now THAT is gawdawful!!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 12:15 PM

Genie said (s)he doesn't mind near rhymes and I agree. Some times bad rhymes make a good song work. Fred Eaglesmith is one songwriter who puts the story ahead of the rhyme and it works (for me). The song HAROLD WILSON comes to mind.

I had me a place on Thunder Ridge in a doomsday shack
My wife she left and took the kids a couple of years back
And I spent most of my mornings just thinking about that
And my afternoons tryin' to figure out what to plant.

While "shack" and "back" are rhymes, "that" also seems to work fine.

******************************************************

They sold that farm to some fool for six cents on the dollar.
I saw him out ther last week; I's on the way to visit my daughter.

Works for me.
*******************************************************

The government cheques come down the pike as regular as rain.
I sit out here most every night 'cept when the June bugs drive me in.

Also works for me.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 09:09 PM

Only if "red" and "blue" are pronounced as rhymes in the common parlance of a lot of people.   

Some say "love" doesn't actually rhyme with "of," either, but the way a lot of people talk, it does.

I'm used to pronouncing "whales" and "wales" decidedly differently. People in some regions don't.

Anyway, as several people have acknowledged, near-rhymes often work just fine in songs.
I certainly don't mind "little" being coupled with "middle."

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 07:11 PM

But "mirror" paired with "clear," "beer," "cheer," etc. is fine with me, as in Dan Fogelberg's "Only The Heart May Know":

So is "red" rhymed with "blue" OK with you as well?

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: alanabit
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 02:54 AM

"The cit's clamour could never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil..." was definitely not one of Lorenz Hart's better efforts. I know it is a take off of a New York accent, but it was beyond even Ella Fitzgerald to make it sound right.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,RolyPoly from Oly
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 01:01 AM

I was playing a song on my radio show one night about fifteen years ago, a serious love song about Mexico. Whoever it was doing the vocals dropped "cherish" on top of "mujeres". I stopped the song at that point and said that though my show was not all that serious, I wasn't about to allow that!
Maybe somebody else heard it too, and can tell me who it was, because he had other rhymes that were just as awful before I pulled the plug.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Matt_R
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 06:38 PM

THis one is lame and insulting:


Hot gingerbread and dynamite,
Boy, I drink nothing but that each night,
Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccky
And the women wicky-wacky-woo!

Aw, man, how they entertain,
I mean, they hurry a hurricane.
Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccky
And the women wicky-wacky-woo!

Fujiama, got a mama,
Then your troubles increase, boy!
It's a bottle in a, bottle in a, bottle in a, bottle in a,
bottle in a Nagasaki!

They hug and kiss each night,
By jingo, boys, worth that price!
Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccky
And the women wicky-wacky-woo!

Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccky
And the women wicky-wacky-woo!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 05:58 PM

chazkratz, you just zeroed in on one of my pet peeves where rhymes are concerned: the resorting to bad grammar just to force the rhyme.

Neil Diamond's "brang" is a prime example, but almost forgiveable, because almost everyone knows it's wrong. But Paula Cole's hit song that starts
"Open up your morning light
And say a little prayer for I ..."
is actually even worse, to me, because it reinforces an all-too-common error.
And it STILL doesn't rhyme! LOL

Sometimes, even if your lyrics mostly have a rhyme pattern, it's better to throw in a non-rhyming couplet than force the rhyme in a contortionist way that butchers your language.


But "mirror" paired with "clear," "beer," "cheer," etc. is fine with me, as in Dan Fogelberg's "Only The Heart May Know":
"... Silent tears, yesterday's mirrors,
Where are the summers, oh, where are the years?"


And I still adore the inventive, comical not-quite-rhymes and groaningly forced rhymes of such composers as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, E Y Harburg, Johnny Mercer, etc.
E.g., another from "If I Only Had A Brain" (Harburg/Arlen):

"But I should show my prowess, be a lion not a meowess ..."

"And perhaps I'd deserve you
and be even worthy erv you,
If I only had a brain. "

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 05:43 PM

What Murray said.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,thurg
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 04:45 PM

I would not assume 'the indicative pronoun "I" in the objective' is for the sake of rhyme; many if not most people do not know the correct use of "I" and "me", and furthermore, many if not most don't really care. And then there are certain dialects in which "I" is generally used rather than "me" in the objective (e.g., "Oh, never mind, I'll go and try,/Perhaps she might but fancy I").

I would think the bulk of traditional folk lyric would be painful for anyone who's disturbed by non-standard or just plain bad grammar.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: chazkratz
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 09:41 AM

A couple of Ogden Nash's finest:

Little gamboling lamb
Do you know where you am?
In a patch of mint
I'll give you a hint
Scram, lamb.

When called by a panther
Don't anther

But what bugs me is when people use the indicative pronoun "I" in the objective, for the sake of a rhyme:

From "Aragon Mill," an otherwise fine song:

I'm too old to change and I'm too young to die
There's no place to go for my true love and I

Particularly when there's a perfectly good option:

We've no place to go, my true love and I

Charles

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,sailorboy
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 04:45 AM

Living in the countryside is very nice
Looking in the hedgerow I see mice

From the Noel Redding solo album. Sometime Jimmy Hendrix bass player.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: DoctorJug
Date: 16 Sep 06 - 02:51 AM

Imagine:

"You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one.
Perhaps one day you'll join us
And the world will live as one".

Cunning, rhyming "one" with "one".
The rest of the song sucks too.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 08:49 PM

I think that Lorenz Hart had entirely too much fun with "Mountain Greenery" (1926):

While you love your lover, let
Blue skies be your coverlet

and

Beans could get no keener re-
Ception in a beanery
Bless our mountain greenery home!

and

Eat and you'll grow fatter, boy.
S'matter boy?
'Atta boy!

Garrison Keillor does some fun peculiarities with rhymes, too.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 07:59 PM

And the final lines of the "Puffin Song" - inspired by 2 pictures om my Gp's wall.
"But if you leave it later on,
Instead of seeing puffin,
You'll find they've gone and flown the nest,
And so you'll just see.............Nuffin"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 03:46 PM

Most of these rhymes are quite brilliant.

I would unhesitatingly cast yet another vote for Neil Diamond's crass, cringeworthy, vomit-inducing " songs she brang to me ".

Nothing will ever come close to that for sheer ineptitude, imo.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: rhyzla
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 03:41 PM

Who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp?
Who put the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?
Who put the bop in the bop sh-bop sh-bop?
Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?
Who put the c*nt in Scunthorpe?


Anyone else heard this - or just me?

Sorry , it's got bugger all to do with rhyming!

BTW, Lehrer is king!!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: pdq
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 01:10 PM

...more great Tom Lehrer rhymes:

"Smut"

Give me smut and nothing but
A dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut
And unsubt-
Tle

I've never quibbled if it was ribald
I would devour where others merely nibbled
As the judge remarked the day that he
Acquitted my Aunt Hortense
"To be smut it must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance"

Especially dividing "ubsubtle" and "utterly". Amazing.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:24 PM

Your lips were like wine (if you'll pardon the simile),
The music was lovely and quite Rudolf Friml'y*.

Tom Lehrer The Weiner Schnitzel Waltz

Giok

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:19 PM

Here's a deliberately painful one from Trevor Crozier's When The Piddletrenthide Jug Band Hit The Charts

Play your cows our Rhythm n Blues: you'll
Get three times more milk than usual

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Big Mick
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 11:01 AM

I don't know about worst, but anyone who can rhyme tuberculosis is aces in my book. This is from Damien Dempsey's "Ghost of Overdoses". This person is ground floor and dynamite, in my book. Thanks to Andrew Harkin, the phenomenal NYC bass player, formerly of The Prodigals and now with Seanchai and the Unity Squad, for calling my attention to him:

here was pills, there was tabs
There was pain and needle jabs
And the ghosts overdoses
Replace the ghosts of tuberculosis


All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 10:53 AM

You talked about your past and future, honey.
And the kind of guy that you thought would suit you, honey.

(You Never Talked AboutMe, Del Shannon)

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Geordie-Peorgie
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 09:13 AM

A lady pal o' mine wrote a song caalled "Hell" where she rhymes

Satan was an angel but now he's diabolical
He pulls out your hair follicle by follicle"

The rest of the song doesn't match the hilarity of that though!!!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 03:42 AM

Tom Lehrer

Rhymes Discovered (pronounced discovaaaaaaaared) with Havard in the song of the Elements.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:30 AM

With the exception of Bobby Goldsboro and Neil Diamond I have enjoyed everyone of these rhymes, well, maybe Bread too.

These by Dave Carter are my favorites and they are brilliant.


Professor come to burst my bubble,

says that girl is bound for trouble

Serves me solace in a paper cup

But it looks a bit like agent orange

and when he leaves he slams the door and Just

about that time she phones me up

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,marie
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:27 AM

Then there's this gem from "Take the Money and Run" bu the steve Miller band:

"Billy Mac is a detective down in Texas
Don't 'cha know, he knows exactly what the facts is"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: freightdawg
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 11:18 PM

Another forced rhyme, but actually one of my all time favorites:

"Roses are red, and violets are purple,
sugar is sweet and so is maple syrple;
I'm the seventh out of seven sons,
My pappy was a pistol,
I'm a 'son of a gun'

I said dang me, dang me;
they oughta take a rope and hang me,
High from the highest tree--
Woman would you weep for me.

A rip pip pip a baa do baa bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbttttt

Roger Miller, a classic of American singers, "Dang Me"

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Joe_F
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 10:13 PM

A triple play:

A young lady who lived near the Bosporus
Was seduced by a red-eyed rhinoceros.
Said she, with a shriek,
"His horn is unique
And leaves mere men looking preposterous."

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Severn
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:10 PM

Post one Hunderd, he thundered!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:08 PM

priceless...

I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain--Whoa!
ttr

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 08:14 PM

*sigh*...beer & mirror

I KNOW folks who say 'meer'...

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Ref
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 08:07 PM

Thanks to Yorkshire Yankee! That Chris Williamson line (Warrior/Bore YA) is THE worst rhyme in folk music, both linguistically and in terms of context (an otherwise great and serious song.) For years we've been replacing it with "Come to your life like a lover/Soon you'll discover/ You can be happy."

Chris was featured at Old Songs this year.   As I wandered about Saturday afternoon, I saw her approaching, alone, on the same path. I thought about bringing it up with her, but she didn't look like a relaxed, happy person and I chickened out, not wanting to risk anything unpleasant for either of us.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 07:48 PM

My stories they are blank,
but my poems, they are verse.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 02:05 PM

what a good job we don't write songs with silly rhymes!

I think I'll stick to blank verse.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 12:45 PM

How about

See the tree how big it's grown
but friends it hasn't been to long it wasn't big
I laughed at her and she got mad
the first day that she planted it was just a twig

Bobby Goldsboro "Honey"

I know it rhymes but it is such a stupid line from such a stupid song that I think it fits the theme.

Sorry to anyone who goes around singing it in their head for the rest of the day.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:39 AM

That's got a long pedigree, Bob

"Each day I look into my mirror
As usual
And tell myself that you're still here
As usual"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bob Hitchcock
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:31 AM

One of my favorites is from "Half a Man" by the Austin Lounge Lizards and goes:-

I buy a tenth of Whiskey,
And a cold three pack of beer.
I drink till I see single,
When I look into the mirror.

I guess if you're from Texas, beer and mirror is a perfectly good rhyme.

Bob

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,redhorse at work
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 08:08 AM

" I close my eyes for a minute and pretend it's me you want.
Meantime I try to act so nonchalant"

Or the classic limerick
"There was an old man of Boulogne
Who sang a most topical song.
It wasn't the words
That frightened the birds
But the terrible double entendre"

nick

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 06:13 AM

Two cringers from the traditional song 'Banks of the sweet Dundee'

'and she did fire
and shot the Squire
on the banks of the sweet Dundee,.

and........

'the trigger she drew
and her uncle slew
on the banks of the sweet Dundee'.

nice song though!

Andy

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 05:48 AM

From a traditional Song from the Unionist tradition in Norn Irn.

He had not turned himself aroond
When he received a deadly wound
His Heels went up, and his head went doon
At the July fair in Garvah.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 05:20 AM

Not sure about worst, but the most forced ever....

I've never seen a jaguar,
Nor yet an Armadill-
o dilloing in his armour,
and I s'pose I never will

Peter Bellemy singing Kipling.