Entertainment For Lively Minds
Outrageous Rhymes
There's a reference in this month's Best/Worst Love Songs to Adrian Gurvitz's 'Classic'. For those who have not read/heard it, Gurvitz rhymes 'classic' 'attic' and 'addict' in three consecutive lines. Nice going, Mr G!
This led me to ponder other examples of lyrics whose rhymes push the boundaries. Some do it on purpose - Squeeze being a prime example. Songs such as Labelled With Love use half-rhymes throughout (bottle/hovel etc) - carrying on in the tradition of poems like Louis Macneice's Bagpipe Music.
Others should know better (I'm talking to you here, Mr Dylan, with your 'light I never knowed/dark side of the road)*.
I'm particularly fond of Gary Byrd's 'The Crown' where he rhymes 'blink' and 'sphinx'. Huzzah!
Anyone else have any favourites?
* I'm steeled for the response from Zimmophiles telling me that any fule knows that this is a brilliant, if oblique, reference to Jack Kerouac/Blind Lemon Jefferson/Rimbaud, and not just a clumsy rhyme with 'road'
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Squeeze were responsible
Squeeze were responsible for probably the most levered in rhyme I've heard:
Never chew a Pickle
With a little Slap & Tickle
You have to throw a stone
To get the pool to ripple
Never really got how this fitted into the sons story (probably does, I just can't see it)
Not an actual song...
... but the single most laboured rhyme I have ever heard came from the pen of William McGonagall, Scotland's worst poet, and it's the final couplet from his deeply affecting masterpiece "The Tay Bridge Disaster" which goes; "For the stronger we our houses do build, / The less chance we have of being killed."
This was from the man who opened another poem with "Oh thou demon drink, thou dark destroyer / Thou curse of society and its greatest annoyer".
Makes Johnny Borrell sound like Morrissey...
I bow to no man
in my love of the classic recordings by Smokey Robinson, and I'm fully aware that the rhyme's far less clunky in Smokey's native accent, but my English ears always have a hard time listening to "You lured me into something I should have dodged/ The love I saw in you was just a mirage."
Nonetheless I love the song:
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage: http://open.spotify.com/track/6Bx6dG1tP6B2jic8p1DjoE
That
is the best record ever made
One in this house often played
a word against it I will not hear
helped choose clothes for Richard Gere
But then again I have records by Debarge
Looking back - that love - WAS a mirage
!
From George Harrison's Cloud 9
George: "Take my love..."
Me: "Don't sing it George, please...no!"
George: "It fits you like a glove"
Me: "Arrgh!"
And I know he's not the only one to use the allusion.
I'm sorry, I've just read the question again and realise I've completely failed to answer. Subconsciously, I think I want the rhythmic boundaries pushed a bit here...
Here's an interesting shoehorn from Pete Townshend.
I just can't face my failure
I'm nothing but a well fucked sailor
Bernard Sumner
Old Barney gives William McGonagall a good run for his money from time-to-time:
Here comes love, it's like honey
You can't buy it with money
(Crystal)
The sea was very rough
It made me feel sick
But I like that kind of stuff
It beats arithmetic
(Slow Jam)
Hey Joe what you doing?
They say you don't care anymore
You had your heart broke by a woman
Now it doesn't work anymore
(Hey Joe)
More Barney
My brother said
He was dead
I looked at him
And shook my head
Perfect Kiss.
Eh? Who's dead? The brother? Is he a ghost?
And more
You both missed:
Every second counts/When I am with you
I think you are a pig/You should be in a zoo (Every Second Counts)
Your country is a wonderful place
It pales my England into disgrace
To buy a drink that is so much more reasonable
I think Ill go there when it gets seasonable
(Sooner Than You Think)
Your hair was long, your eyes was blue
Guess what I'm gonna do to you (Face Up)
The man's a poet.
Dreadful Barney lyric
Thieves Like Us should have remained an instrumental. Exhibit 4069:
"And it cuts your life
like a broken knife"
and
"love is found in the east and west
but when love is at home it's the best"
He made these words up on the spot, surely.
Nice and Smooth-Hip Hop Junkies
"don't beg cause cause I'm not at begonia
I dress warm so that I won't catch pneumonia
My rhymes are stronger than ammonia
I'm a diamond, you're a cubic zirconia "
at 2.00
Style Council
Never forget the rhyming genius of of Mr Weller – from “Walls Come Tumbling Down.”
"Those who are with and those who are without
And dangle jobs like a donkey's carrot"
Oh dear.
That's a doozy
But to be fair to ol' toblerone head I think the words were:
"Those who have, and those who have not
And dangle jobs like a donkey's carr-ot"
Still clumsy, still a bit silly but at least this version rhymes.
Glen Campbell
How about Rhinestone Cowboy:
"There's been a load of compromisin'
On the road to my horizon"
Depeche Mode
'Words are very / unnecessary'
I would Enjoy The Silence if you'd just shut up
And the vomit inducing
People are people so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully?
Tosh of the highest order and a dismal rhyme.
Agreed - but wait, there's more
"Promises me I'm as safe as houses
As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers"
From Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down Again - No 22 smash hit from 1987. I think the only successful use of the word trousers in a pop hit, other than Lonnie Donnegan.
Where Are You Baby? - Betty Boo
"I've used up all my tissues
'cos there's more seriouser issues"
I love that line more than I can say.
Just like the Four Tops...
I will also offer this one from ABC's That Was Then & This is Now:
"Can't complain and mustn't grumble
help yourself to another piece of apple crumble"
It's all about Technique
As Prefab Sprout have been much discussed recently, this from "Swoon" sprang to mind. I think it works precisely because it's slightly awkward:
"In the mornings I go walking, it makes the hurting soften
I've seen a lot of places because I miss her very often".
I think Burt Bacharach
I think Burt Bacharach nailed it in 'I'll Never Fall In Love Again'
What do you get when you kiss a guy
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, he'll never phone you
And we should not forget Nick Lowe's classic from All Men Are Liars
Do you remember Rick Astley?
He had a great big hit that was ghastly
Truer word never spoken
genius
pneumonia
phone yer
that is pop music...
Thanks for putting me straight Austin but the it's the still the "like a donkey's carr-ot" bit that gets me... a donkey's carrot - oh er missus! I want to kick over the statues with PW but that bit alway stops me. So it's back to the day job for me.
Cole Porter
"I wish I were in love again" is often held up as a paradigm of the writer's craft but the first lines of the stanza
When love congeals
it soon reveals
the faint aroma of performing seals
strikes me as unpleasant and inelegant esepcially as it precedes the finely wrought metaphor of
the double crossing of a pair of heels