Regrettable Songwriting: Rhymes

[tgies]

Presented for your consideration, I have compiled a list of rhymes that are Considered Harmful, and will cause me to emit an involuntary loud "BUHHHHH" and mark your band down a few points in my internal spreadsheet.

• Fly/sky/high. Like all of Satan's snares, this rhyme is simple and obvious, a path of least resistance. I cannot count the number of times I've heard some generic clipart rock open with some douchebag singing "I WISH I COULD FLY / INTO THE SKY / SO VERY HIGH". Awesome, thanks for that surpassingly unoriginal expression of a desire all humankind has shared for centuries. Buy a goddamn JetBlue ticket and shut up.
• Friend/end. What end, anyway.
• Together/forever. Not likely -- word on the street has that your significant other is thinking of leaving you for someone who doesn't need to resort to cheap slant rhymes.
• Fire/desire. Betrays pyromaniac tendencies.
• This one's one of those idiosyncrasies in Christian music: word/Lord. I don't think you understand how this works. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that lyrics in contemporary Christian music are typically drawn from a very small pool of set phrases, resulting in most songs having nearly the exact same goddamn words.
• Nigga/trigga. Apparently rap songwriters frequently have need of a couplet that describes a black person using a firearm. They seem to have established a certain standardized way to construct such lyrics. They are proud of this elegant solution and trot it out as frequently as is remotely excusable. Addendum: I just remembered that Elvis Costello managed to pull this one, in "Oliver's Army".
• AB/B or anything similarly constructed. It is often tempting to say that someone's fall from grace was a source of disgrace, but this is prudently avoided.
• Anything/surrender. If you are thinking of rhyming "surrender", stop. It is mathematically impossible to come up with a non-stupid rhyme for "surrender". Also, if you are trying to rhyme "surrender", chances are you are in a nu-metal group -- disband it at once.

Bonus tips:

• The Black Eyed Peas' entire repertoire doubles as a sort of database of regrettable rhymes and is required listening for any aspiring songwriter. A friend whom I consulted on the topic of bad rhymes advised me of Black Eyed Peas single "Where Is the Love", a me-too "We Are the World"-style anthem from the school of thought that seeks to cure every social ill by writing an over-earnest pop song about it and hiring a celebrity to sing on it:

  But if you only have love for your own race
  Then you only leave space to discriminate
  And to discriminate only generates hate
  And when you hate, then you're bound to get irate

  I'm getting irate right now.
• The main hook line of your chorus should ideally not feature a glaring cringeworthy grammatical error. Extra prepositions shoehorned in to hit your syllable quota are particularly inexcusable.
• Never write this verse (courtesy of Slipknot's "Wait & Bleed", truly the spirit of a generation captured in one song if ever I have heard it):

  I wipe it off on a tile, the light is brighter this time
  Everything is 3D blasphemy
  My eyes are red and gold, the hair is standing straight up
  This is not the way I picture me

  If you believe you may have written this verse, contact a doctor right away.
• If you are a suburban white kid trying to write rap, please be careful that you do not mindlessly parrot things you heard in a Wu Tang track. There is a certain unfavorable irony to some goofy teenager obliviously rapping about the Nation of Gods and Earths because he thinks it sounds cool.
• Relatedly, refrain from trying to shoehorn as many Rap Words as you can think of into any rap or conversation about rap. "Spit", "real", the list goes on. It is painfully obvious that you are not comfortable with these terms. Also, if using them requires conscious effort on your part, your notion of what Rap Words are is probably preserved in amber from 1994.
• One of the best rhymes, courtesy of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "The Tears of a Clown" (a perennial favorite of mine):

  Now, if there's a smile on my face
  It's only there trying to fool the public
  But when it comes down to fooling you
  Now, honey, that's quite a different subject

  The cleverness of this wholly excuses the later "sad/sad/bad/glad".

Comments

[tgies.livejournal.com]

I knew you were going to bring this up. As basically a work of parody, Electric Six's "Danger! High Voltage!" is excused.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

That single was their breakout hit. At this point, it is clear that the Peas and similarly shameless guest vocalist Justin Timberlake can get away with anything.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

My initial assessment of it was "guy writes like Dragonball Z fanfic".

[anti-esque.livejournal.com]

yeah because that is my theme song

[omgwtftoph.livejournal.com]

Dance/romance?


Also I feel like the chorus of Pretender by the Foo Fighters does a good job of rhyming "surrender." Just saying.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

Dance/romance is pretty cheap, yeah.

I just remembered dance/chance, variants of which seem to appear in every language that inherited those words from Old French (cf. Swedish dans/chanse, Dutch dans/kans, French danse/chance), and it has even been known to materialize in loanword form in Japanese music (dansu/chansu).

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Darling, you know I would never surrender
Not even if you put my wang in a blender

[tgies.livejournal.com]

That's hot.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Also, is this fly/sky/high variant acceptable?
"Yeah and if I pull down my fly, I could piss on the sky
Cause nigga I'm that high" (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Fly-As-The-Sky-lyrics-Chamillionaire/640B8E550EE8F9FB482570C9002A7897)

[tgies.livejournal.com]

Whoa, subverted! I had forgotten about that one. I'll waive the usual penalty.

[jhskulk.livejournal.com]

Excuse me for butting in but I would like to paste my favourite song lyrics:

Vendetta Red - Shatterday

Our days are numbered 666
And I'll begin the countdown by calling off the circus
Somewhere in these cryptic scriptures
I'll find myself drifting in a sky full of...

Scars they cut into you
Blisters rose colored hue
Mayday we're going down
These mescaline memories are morose
Your kerosene company is comatose

Our days are numbered 321
And when you bit the bullet I held the smoking gun
Somewhere in these violent volumes
I'll find myself drifting in a sky full of...

Scars they cut into you
Blisters rose colored hue
Mayday we're going down
These mescaline memories are morose
Your kerosene company is comatose

And I would sick up half of my cold eye
to set you on your head
If I were you then I would memorize
This loose lipped lullaby instead of waiting
Carving out your own

Scars they cut into you
Blisters rose colored hue
Mayday we're going down
Follow we went around
Scars they cut into you
Blisters rose colored hue
Mayday we're going down
These mescaline memories are morose
Your kerosene company is comatose

(Not makin' this up)

[relaxing.livejournal.com]

Great list! AB/B is a pet peeve of mine.
You should get together with reallybadpoetry and write a book.

[tomf006.livejournal.com]

hands in the air/just don't care?

I mean come on

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[tgies.livejournal.com]

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