To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.

Subject: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Tunesmith
Date: 26 May 23 - 10:01 AM

I was reading - again - Jim Webb’s wonderful book on songwriting “Tunesmith”, and he pushes the point that lyricists, in his opinion, should always use “perfect rhymes” ( as was the norm for Cole Porter and his contemporaries ); indeed, he says even if listeners don’t seem to recognise a “false rhyme”, it would still register on a subliminal level and weaken the power of the lyrics. Now, it so happens, that in the first verse of “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Bob rhymes “man and sand”. What do we think?

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 26 May 23 - 10:17 AM

It's not as bad as verse 3 rhyming "cry" and "died".

LFF

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 26 May 23 - 12:08 PM

I don't think it's entirely necessary, though perhaps preferable for more serious songs. However, there are some perfectly acceptable songs where there are no rhymes: a friend wrote a song like this then, having sung it to us, asked people what was odd about the song - no-one had actually spotted that there were no rhymes!
Imperfect rhymes can add a bit of fun to comic songs, especially if the audience almost anticipates what the final word is going to be , and knows it will be a really "bad rhyme".

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Tunesmith
Date: 26 May 23 - 12:57 PM

Isn't Paul Simon's "America" without rhyme?

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 May 23 - 01:17 PM

MacColl's Dirty Old Town contains no rhymes

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: DaveRo
Date: 26 May 23 - 01:19 PM

Joni Mitchell is a great songwriter. She doesn't seem to regard rhymes as essential, or even important. She often departs markedly from a song's normal metre too.

But for songs in musicals I suspect both rhyme and metre are important.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: meself
Date: 26 May 23 - 01:50 PM

If you're talking about Jimmy Webb, the writer of a number of hit songs, well, it would be presumptuous to gainsay the man ... but, I'll go ahead anyway: nonsense. There.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 26 May 23 - 02:13 PM

We had other threads about the topic.

A song does not need to rhyme, but a false rhyme produces irritation, particularly when mixed with genuine ones. Best avoid it, unless you're Bob Dylan.

"Man" and "san'" do rhyme, if so pronounced, but "cry" and "died" never. He may have resorted to something like "... That too many folks had to die" – but then, I didn't win a Nobel Prize yet.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 26 May 23 - 04:13 PM

Chris Difford has a knack for partial rhyme. Try "Up the Junction" or "Labelled With Love" and tell me they don't work. In true poetry, Louis McNiece's "Bagpipe Music" uses them as a deliberate evocation of dissonance.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 May 23 - 04:56 AM

Si Kahn; "I try to go through life with my ears unplugged. I’m always listening for the spare parts out of which I can stick a song together: the raggedy rhythm of speech, two words falling in love, a strange rhyme, the bare bones of a story. I’ve gotten a lot of my best lines and songs that way."

He will even go through a new song and replace a perfect rhyme with a near one. Hudson River New York Upstate Waltz, written by Si Kahn & Tom Chapin: "On the surface, this is an exercise in how far a rhyme can go and still be considered a near-rhyme, and a song of lost love."

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 May 23 - 05:16 AM

Grey In L.A. by Loudon Wainwright III has unusual internal rhymes.

When it's grey in L.A. I sure like it that way
Cause there's way too much sunshine round here
I don't know about you I get so sick of blue skies
Wherever they always appear

And I sure love the sound of the rain pouring down
On my carport roof made out of tin
If there's a flood then there's gonna be mud slides
We all have to pay for our sin

It's a great song, even if it is a little too clever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KEAGccPDAU Grey in LA

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 23 - 10:04 PM

I agree with Guest Mark (3 posts above).
Chris Difford is a brilliant lyricist. He tees up a perfect rhyme then uses an imperfect one. Endless ‘Moons and Junes’ can become so boring.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: saulgoldie
Date: 29 May 23 - 07:51 AM

In Tom Lehrer's "We are the Folk Song Army" he asserts that
"The tune doesn't have to be clever
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme - excuse me - rhyne"

So there's that.

Saul

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 May 23 - 09:44 AM

Query: If rhymes occur at the ends of words, and alliteration at the beginnings, is there a word for what they're both special cases of?

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Tom Patterson
Date: 29 May 23 - 01:53 PM

" There's four of us who share this room and we work hard for the craic
And sleeping late on Sunday I never get to mass". (Ralph McTell) The other verses all have perfect rhymes but does it matter? It's just a brilliant song that lots of people want to play and that's all that matters in the end.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GerryM
Date: 29 May 23 - 07:51 PM

MaJoC, perhaps "assonance"?

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,TJ
Date: 29 May 23 - 08:09 PM

"Songs she sang to me,
Songs she brang to me."
(Neil Diamond)
Perfect rhyme.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: BobL
Date: 30 May 23 - 02:49 AM

Some rhymes only work in a specific region.

Cornwall:
"Now the holly bears a berry as green as the grass,
And Mary bore Jesus, who died on the cross."

Scotland:
"Humpty Dumpty sat on his arse,
Writing verses exceedingly terse."

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GerryM
Date: 30 May 23 - 02:57 AM

TJ, Martin Pearson gives "Songs she brang to me" as one of the two worst rhymes in all of pop music, the other being this, from The Gambler:

"So I handed him my bottle,
And he drank down my last swallow"

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: matt milton
Date: 30 May 23 - 05:38 AM

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.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 30 May 23 - 07:03 AM

> when the rhyme is identical (in which case it can't really be said to
> be a rhyme)

I got confused by this in primary school (in The Grand Old Duke Of York). My eventual solution to this conundrum is that a word always rhymes with itself: I call it the "identity rhyme", by analogy to the function of 0 in addition, and 1 in multiplication.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 30 May 23 - 08:08 AM

> "assonance"?

Bingo, o wise Gerry, even if it does sound a tad naughty: a resonance of vowels (consonance, I find, is a resonance of consonants). Curiously, Wiktionary's definition of "rhyme" seems to be more general, and explicitly includes Norse rhyming (which I'd have called "alliteration").

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GerryM
Date: 30 May 23 - 07:43 PM

MaJoC, if you're going to get mathematical, "rhymes with" is an equivalence relation on the set of words in (say) English, and what you have noticed is the reflexive property of equivalence relations.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 31 May 23 - 03:36 AM

I nod sagely, Gerry: dem's de words I was after. It's always a pleasant surprise to encounter someone with expertise in this, erm, field.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GerryM
Date: 31 May 23 - 05:10 AM

MaJoC, there's one in every group. Why don't you give me a ring?

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Ed.
Date: 31 May 23 - 09:42 AM

I like the way George Harrison occasionaly eschewed obvious rhymes

The Beatles: 'If I Needed Someone'

Had you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this [this way]

Solo: 'Dark Horse'

I thought that you knew it all along
Until you started getting me not right [all wrong]

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: meself
Date: 31 May 23 - 12:17 PM

Only a pedant would decry:

"So I handed him my bottle,
And he drank down my last swallow"

- in the context of the song, it works perfectly. Which is all that matters.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: meself
Date: 31 May 23 - 02:04 PM

Not to mention that the corresponding lines (i.e., the first lines) in the other verses are:

"On a warm summer evening,
On a train bound for nowhere"

"He said, Son I've made a life,
Of reading people's faces"

"Every gambler knows,
The secret to surviving"

"And when he finished speaking,
He turned back to the window"

I think someone doesn't understand how rhyme works - and it's not the writer of The Gambler .....

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Pappy Fiddle
Date: 31 May 23 - 08:06 PM

I think it's better to have lines that DON'T rhyme than lines that do but they're only there because they rhyme. For instance, "Baby, when I met you, there was peace unknown / I set out to get you with a fine-tooth comb." What in tarnation does that mean?

I remember listening to an interview by Dick Biondi with Judy Collins. She talked about her lyrics and admitted she sometimes had to just be done even tho they weren't perfect. She noted that Leonard Cohen never would.

When I create a song, first I write down what I want to say. Then I start working it over to get it to rhyme and rhythm. If I can't then when I put it to music I put some stuff in there to draw attention away from the "terrible flaw".

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GerryM
Date: 01 Jun 23 - 02:14 AM

Martin Pearson sings "The Gambler". The part about the two worst rhymes starts around 2:35. https://youtu.be/8dHy5BoSnCw

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Whistling Dave Taviner
Date: 02 Jun 23 - 02:28 PM

Jim Webb's one my favourite songwriters, but I think he's got that one wrong. So many examples of off-the-scale superb songs that break this rule. Second verse of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne:

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And just when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors
Until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

Sheer perfection and, by the way, that last line is the best line I've ever come across, anywhere.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Anne Lister sans cookie
Date: 03 Jun 23 - 12:40 PM

One of the most tedious evenings I have ever spent was in the company with a chap who had requested a meeting because he was an aspiring songwriter and wanted to play me his songs. He'd been to songwriting evening classes, he said. His songs rhymed. They were also bland, insipid and had very predictable melodies - ah, but the rhythms were also absolutely perfect. I struggled to think of how to respond, but remained polite and mildly encouraging, which was a challenge. Then he asked (remarkably late in the conversation) to hear one of my songs. I played him a recording of "Icarus" and gave him the lyric sheet. He then dissected it, pointing out where in his opinion it didn't scan, and where it didn't rhyme "properly". He also told me that with my voice I should be singing something "meaningful". I asked what he meant. "Like Moon River", he told me.
I never heard of that chap again, or his songs. I've lost count of how many people have recorded "Icarus".
That's all. Songs work for you, or they don't. If you're analysing the rhymes, chances are the song isn't working for you, but it's probably got very little to do with the rhymes.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: meself
Date: 03 Jun 23 - 12:58 PM

Odd that he would request a meeting when he was apparently unfamiliar with your songs. That's people for ya, though, isn't it?

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Joe_F
Date: 03 Jun 23 - 06:45 PM

MaJoC: Some years ago I published an essay on the subject of your query: "Prosodic Resonance", under the name "F Juniper", in _Word Ways_ 10:3 (August 1977). "Assonance" is indeed the word for resemblance in the vowels. Of course, we already have "alliteration" for resemblance in initial consonant cluster, and I managed to scare up "consonance" or "rim rhyme" for resemblance in the initial and the final consonant clusters. For the remaining possibilities, I suggested "deliteration" (final consonant clusters only, e.g. "hit" & "bat") and "insonance" (initial consonant cluster & vowel, e.g. "bat" & "ban"). Poets have of course used these resemblances as well.

It is not hard to find octets of syllables of which each clashes completely with one of the others and bears a different resemblance to the other five. I have written a number of poems based on such octets. Here is one:

Through the years, we've grown used
to the truth-telling boor,
    so rejoice in the yeast
      and its white lies on beer --
in the bubble-borne boost
to the bedlam where you're
    a contented old beast
      in a Happy New Year.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GerryM
Date: 03 Jun 23 - 07:23 PM

Joe's essay is online at https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2105&context=wordways

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 03 Jun 23 - 09:14 PM

I'd suggest Stevie Nicks as another songwriter whose lyrics don't exactly 'rhyme '

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 12:22 AM

Imperfect rhymes used to bother me, but after years of singing in a choir at a Catholic church, with many modern songs that have only approximate rhymes, I got comfortable with the sense of closure that they brought. Meaning is more important than rhyme. The congregation didn't seem to mind, either.

I have written a couple or three original songs, and I wouldn't have bothered if I had had to wrangle the lyrics till all rhymes were perfect.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 02:59 AM

Yes, as Joe above has mentioned, there are several types of rhyme, apart from the so-called perfect ones - assonance, consonance, male and female rhymes, etc, so when you come across verse that doesn't appear to rhyme, look more closely and you might find some quite sophisticated rhymes, and not necessarily at the end of lines. Many pop songs use lyrics where just the consonants might rhyme, with more obvious rhymes only used internally within the lines. Those who claim that songs like Dirty Old Town, Suzanne, etc are devoid of rhymes, clearly don’t understand or are unfamiliar with the various rhyming conventions.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Whistling Dave Taviner
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 04:30 AM

Just to be clear: my citing Suzanne was in response to Webb's recommendation/rule for "perfect rhymes" that the OP was putting forward for discussion. I certainly wasn't claiming that Suzanne was devoid of *any* kind of rhymes!

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 07:48 AM

I wasn’t getting at anyone in particular, but perhaps all of us who wrongly cite examples of songs with no rhymes. I guess we were all taught to write simple poetry at school with straight forward masculine rhymes, and they never went on to tell us about other more sophisticated types of rhymes. How many of us can’t see the consonant rhyme in this line?
“The answer my friend,
Is blowing in the wind”.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Roderick A Warner
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 08:22 AM

Nice to be reminded of an old song, Whistling D! That verse is a killer. Leonard Cohen, of course, was a recognised poet before he entered the pop world and as a young writer would have been aware of the history of poetry in English/American from the nineteenth century onwards. Also the influences from France and beyond. Rhyme was in the process of being displaced before the First World War in Modernism generally. Bob Dylan, despite his adoption of a minor lyric poet’s name, (Bob Hart or Bob Crane probably didn’t have the same resonance for him?) also had an awareness of these literary processes so it’s probably not much of a stretch to see those poetic influences working themselves out in various songs. I’m thinking especially with regard to old Dylan songs like ‘Hattie Caroll’ where the chorus is in rhyme and the verse stretches to accommodate his narrative beyond a conventional rhyme scheme. Dylan massively expanded the potentials of popular and folk songs and his influence opened a lot of space, eliding those genres, one could argue. Whether songs rhyme or not doesn’t seem so important imo after over a century of language stretched by experimentation and circumstances. There is a larger argument here, no doubt, but for now: it contains multitudes…

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Greum
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 11:44 AM

I always despair of the 4th verse of Captain Kidd whenever I sing it:

Abbreviated verse:

I was sick and nigh to death
And I vowed at every breath
To walk in wisdom's path.

Whoever thought path rhymed with death or breath...

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 02:25 PM

Path and death is another good example of consonance rhyming, even it seems to sit a bit uncomfortably in what starts out as a series of rhyming vowel sounds.
As for Hattie Carroll, I used to think there were no rhymes in the verses, but there are quite a few if you look, and can get over our deeply instilled obsession with rhyming vowel sounds.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 05:56 PM

GerryM: Fancy that! Thank you. %^)

Some other octet poems by me can be found on the poetry page of this site. I can't find it at the moment, because the search facility is not working.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 07:20 PM

I must admit two works of genius by Paul Simon, American Tune and America have always struck me for the oddity and slightly clunky fitting of a word or two, and American Tune's running in and out of rhyme - yet nothing else fits. The line here I reproduce as sung, feels shoehorned in to fit.. "we come on the ship they call the May-Flower". In America a totally non-rhyming song.. "and the moon rose over an o--pen field'.

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: Halfmoon Charlie
Date: 05 Jun 23 - 08:07 AM

I guess I would say that the dissonance created in the listeners ear by the untrue rhyme, might actually accent the meaning of the lyric.

Not strictly about lyrics...

"Frost once said that whenever he came across a rhymed
poem the first thing he did was run his eye down the
right side of the poem to see who had won, the poet or the
rhyme scheme."

attributed to Robert Frost by Billy Collins (in the Introduction to: "The Stuffed Owl - An Anthology of Bad Verse"

Subject: RE: To Rhyme or not to rhyme...perfectly.
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 05 Jun 23 - 01:28 PM

America, like Hattie Carroll, is in 3/4 time, and therefore the lyrics have less single syllable words at the end of each line than songs in common time do. You either then have to use lots of feminine rhymes (multi-syllable words):
“In the courtroom of honour, the judge pounded his GAVEL,
To show that all’s equal, and the Courts are on the LEVEL.”
Or you can go for a Shakespearean style of blank verse, with a single rhyming couplet at the end, arguably to relieve the tension from the preceding dissonance. Does that apply to America? Arguably, yes, because the last lines of each run through of the main melody are:
“Michigan seems like a dream to me NOW,
It took me more hours to hitch hike from SagiNAW.”
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know WHY
Counting the cars on the New Jersey TurnPIke…”