Some like the sun - They'd be a Barbadian
But we think it's fun here in Stratford on Avion

There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards

Einstein can't be classed as witless.
He claimed atoms were the littlest.
When you did a bit of splitting-em-ness
Frighten everybody shitless

Need a rhyme, can't find the right word?
Just invent a new word to fill the gap

I was workin for a time at the 5 and dime
My boss was Mr McGee.
He told me several times that he didn't like my kind.
Cos I w's a bit too leeesurely

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
the regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin.

ghost/toast rhyme that gets a mention here every so often, but I can't rember who it's by

is awash with shit rhymes:

Top Cat! The most effectual Top Cat! Who's intellectual

close friends get to call him T.C. Providing it's with dignity.

Top Cat! The indisputable leader of the gang. He's the boss, he's a pip, he's the championship. He's the most tip top, Top Cat.

Yes he's a chief, he's a king, But above everything, He's the most tip top, Top Cat.

Fuck off, TC.

Jim
Hurray for Him!

(tongue firmly in cheek I suspect)

"'Cos I'm in a helpless situation
And I need some consolation
'Cos my mind is in confusion
And my heart feels much abusion..."

It's in Helpless by Kim Weston:

"It's no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov

Don't stand, don't stand so
Don't stand so close to me...."

Jonathan Richman is a great man for the forced rhymes...a highlight is...

"I love Cleopatra, I'm still grateful that I know that old Girl,
Even though I wonder where she's at-ra as I wander through this world". (Abdul & Cleopatra)

but my all-time favourite rubbish rhyme is from John Foxx in his po-faced Metamatic days with...

"An underwater kind of silence,
Humming of electric pylons".
(A New Kind of Man) I think.

and then there's the classic Groucho Marx's Lydia the Tatooed Lady ...

"When she stands the world grows littler,
When she sits, she sits on Hitler".

"I'm a boy, I'm a boy but my ma won't admit it,
If I say I am, I geddit"

I must admit they had a rockin' band
Man, they was blowing like a 'herrycan'

At every jam we play
We break two needles
There's three of us
But we're not the Beatles.

King Of Rock (1985).

No one bows lower before the throne of King Len but there really are some seriously cheesy rhymes in his pension song that I refuse to accept are dripping with irony.

Every verse throws up a gem to rhyme with hallelujah:

"You don't really care for music, do you"

"Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you", etc.

She's giving me excitations...

.....this, from Carrie Rodriguez's "He Ain't Jesus" (and I'm still not sure whether it's genius or corn):-

"He ain't Moses, and I'm not Bhudda,
And I never climbed that mountain like I shoulda"

love her, love Christine, but
'Now she's in purple
Now she's a turtle'
isn't very good is it?

Big muff, can't you see I've had enoug
Lord knows you're stifling me
It's like an allergy with no apology
It's saps my energy, most caterempously.

Apologies for the spelling and probable mishearing but what is caterempously? can anyone enlighten me please.

I say to thee
respectfully
I'm aware that you're cheating

Never mind she's telling the cheating hound she knows what he's up to "respectfully", which has always irked me, but Thee? Unless there's some far-flung state in the US where this is still in use, this was a few centuries out.

Johnny Mercer wrote a lyric to an existing jazz piece called Midnight Sun. He had to make a lyric work around that title. He came up with internal rhymes and a cracker of a lyric.

Contrived? You decide

Your lips were like a red and ruby chalice, warmer than the summer night

The clouds were like an alabaster palace rising to a snowy height.

Each star its own aurora borealis, suddenly you held me tight

I could see the Midnight Sun.

Can't believe we've got this far on a forced rhyme thread without mentioning Chris De Burgh's a little romarrrrnce/given half a charrrnce travesty in Lady In Red.

Told me love was too plebeian, told me you were through with me and...

The city's glamour
can never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil
We'll turn Manhattan
into an isle of joy!

"He didn't know a Stratocaster from a nuclear disaster"

from 'The Man Who Walked Towards The Music" on the "A King At Nightfall" LP, 1973 ish.

My love for you is immeasurable
My respect for you immense
You're ageless timeless lace and fineness
You're beauty and elegance

He pronounces "elegance" as "elegence" to rhyme with "immense"

Always drove me mad

Bet he said it to all the girls too

"when i play guitar
beat jimmy page
the girlies i like
are under-age"

CBS leave this in then hilariously cover up a couple of "fucks" and ditch their version of "i'm down"

"she works at marks and spencer's
la la la lech walensa's"

in fact the whole of "memories of a flat"

has some beauties - but they are deliberate (once again) - particularly the knowing gap just before 'gra-vel'

I know this girl named Denise
She makes me weak at the knees
She drives a lavender Lexus
She lives in Queens but her dad lives in Texas

and

I heard she used to be married
She listens to Puff Daddy
She works at Liberty Travel
She got a heart made of.. gra-vel

... 'Take The Money and Run'

"Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes"

Ouch!