Should lyrics rhyme???

  • Thread starter Thread starter mikeh
  • Start date Start date
i am not a prolific songrwiter but i know three good writers. two of them are very good melodists and i notice that it's these two writers that don't seem to be confined to rhyming. they can make just about any phrases fit together by the melody they choose. when a melodist can do that it opens up the possiblities. no more choosing a word that isn't perfect, but is needed because it rhymes.

i find that songs that aren't stuck in a rhyme scheme are more melodically sophisticated. unfortuntaly i can't write at all without at least a simple rhyme scheme like abcb. lol.
 
Maybe I'm a bit "old school" but the idea of rhyme is a part of the poetry of a song that makes it stick in your mind. We all remember silly little nursery rhymes for that reason. To me, it is the cleverness to "turn a phrase" so that the rhyme seems to be a natural part of the flow of the words, not just a rhyme for the sake of poetry that creates the rythmic ebb and flow that converts poetry to music. With that being said, I have to admitt that sometimes it is that line that leaves you hanging that really gives a song that something special, that a perfect rhyme just couldn't have done.
Poetry in and of itself can get pretty interesting if you consider that the rhyming syllable can be the third or fifth syllable of a line,(or any other,) it doesn't have to be the last one. Or that the rhyme can be from verse to verse rather than from line to line. The poetic part has more possibilities than many people realize.
 
maybe it's just me, or I really am, but I'm performing & producing hip-hop (not the i'm rich and women are all sluts type) but anyways, I write to rhyme many times, I've tried to change it up so that way people don't get boring of the same kind of song to the next. here's one of my rhymes....


there's only one chance and one life to live/
but plenty choices to choose and one god to forgive/
ain't nobody in this world is going to listen close/
so here's a toast to those who haven't given me hope/
as these days go on, it's getting harder to sleep at night/
it's like a fight on the mic and i'm breathing it life/
another struggle not to miss my only chance to hold on/
and then I loose my grip, and get stiff like a cold arm/
but from god's wisdom that he passed to you/
the kingdom's strengh to push all these mountains that I move/
so as time goes on, i realize that things change/
it's still all strange how we made it out the game/
if you pick up the pace, god'll give you a taste/
god gave me his world on top of a silver plate/
and if I can't get first, I won't settle for second place/
I've put a lot on the line, so i'mma do what it takes/


I know to yall, it probably has no meaning & no point to it at all, but to me, it did when I was writing it?
 
Mindset said:
maybe it's just me, or I really am, but I'm performing & producing hip-hop (not the i'm rich and women are all sluts type) but anyways, I write to rhyme many times, I've tried to change it up so that way people don't get boring of the same kind of song to the next. here's one of my rhymes....


there's only one chance and one life to live/
but plenty choices to choose and one god to forgive/
ain't nobody in this world is going to listen close/
so here's a toast to those who haven't given me hope/
as these days go on, it's getting harder to sleep at night/
it's like a fight on the mic and i'm breathing it life/
another struggle not to miss my only chance to hold on/
and then I loose my grip, and get stiff like a cold arm/
but from god's wisdom that he passed to you/
the kingdom's strengh to push all these mountains that I move/
so as time goes on, i realize that things change/
it's still all strange how we made it out the game/
if you pick up the pace, god'll give you a taste/
god gave me his world on top of a silver plate/
and if I can't get first, I won't settle for second place/
I've put a lot on the line, so i'mma do what it takes/


I know to yall, it probably has no meaning & no point to it at all, but to me, it did when I was writing it?
Click to expand...

Nice rhyming, not exact rhymes but similar vowel sounds that allow you to use a larger variety of words. :D :) :D :)
 
Before anyone jumps on his Rap by saying A/B with words that don't even perfectly rhyme isn't legit, let me point you to "Up the Junction" by Squeeze, which uses this exact form/structure, and carries it powerfully (i think i mentioned this song previously)-

I never thought it would happen
With me and the girl from clapham
Out on a windy common
That night I aint forgotten
When she dealt out the rations
With some or other passions
I said you are a lady
Perhaps she said I may be
We moved into a basement
With thoughts of our engagement
We stayed in by the telly
Although the room was smelly
We spent our time just kissing
The railway arms were missing
But love had got us hooked up
And all our time it took up

I got a job with stanley
He said Id come in handy
And started me on monday
So I had a bath on sunday
I worked eleven hours
And bought the girl some flowers
She said shed seen a doctor
And nothing now could stop her

I worked all through the winter
The weather brass and bitter
I put away a tenner
Each week to make her better
And when the time was ready
We had to sell the telly
Late evenings by the fire
With little kicks inside her

This morning at 4:50
I took her rather nifty
Down to an incubator
Where thirty minutes later
She gave birth to a daughter
Within a year a walker
She looked just like her mother
If there could be another

And now shes two years older
Her mothers with a soldier
She left me when my drinking
Became a proper stinging
The devil came and took me
From bar to street to bookie
No more nights by the telly
No more nights nappies smelling

Alone here in the kitchen
I feel theres something missing
Id beg for some forgiveness
But beggings not my business
And she wont write a letter
Although I always tell her
And so its my assumption
Im really up the junction
 
Mindset said:
cool, that's how I usually try to put words together.
Click to expand...


Yep, the following lines I like - you didn't just A/B with the line above, but placed the rhyme within the line itself in triplicate. As mentioned before in the Cole Porter post, this kind of scheme helps with the momentum and power of delivery.

"so here's a toast to those who haven't given me hope"

and

"it's like a fight on the mic and i'm breathing it life"
 
Words need to flow together somehow, and rhyming seems to make songs flow. If I like the song, words don't have to tell an exact story or anything. Everything just needs to fit. Read teh lyrics of Come Together, by the Beatles. Kind of odd, and don't have a lot of personal meaning to me, but run together very well, and I like the tune.
 
yes i agree...
rhymes help the flow...
so i think for a song to be good, it should rhyme
that is unless its like a hella-good song that blows rhyming out of the water:D
 
To me the answer is they don't have to, but I've never heard a song with lyrics that I liked that didn't.
 
Read teh lyrics of Come Together, by the Beatles. Kind of odd, and don't have a lot of personal meaning to me, but run together very well, and I like the tune.
Click to expand...

Yeah...the Beatles. Go you pointed that out...had me running Bealtes songs though my head. First was "Across the Universe" which doesn't rhyme at all, then "Let it Be" which...well doesn't rhyme exactly. Come to think of it...they don't rhyme in a box type of fashion in a lot of their tunes. One of my faves by them is "And your bird can sing", not the album version, the alt take where they're cracking up laughing (while trying to sing it) through the whole beginning of the song.It never gets old.

J.P.
 
There are lots of ways to rhyme a lyric
The easiest way is to have the last word in consecutive lines end with the same vowel sound. like : Roses are red, violets are blue
This lyric stinks, and so do you....
No real artistry involved in coming up with this kind of stuff, it is known as doggerel , and it makes people lots of money every year. This is the best way to rhyme if you are writing for general audiences who have a very short attention span. I haven't heard the album you refer to , but don't be too harsh in your judgement of his writing ability, it could just be that you don't get it (yet)
If you are really interested in checking out some cool ways to link words together to tell stories without being chained to a rigid rhyming pattern check out guys like Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan etc.


chazba
 
Most songwriters cheat a little, some a lot. Rhyming can be stilted, accent & slang help with a twisted vowel etc.
The Squeeze track, a classic lyric with a great story, has a mix of rhymes & almost rhymes. They seem to have a reasonable balance with a dozen real rhyming couplettes. It's funny how their frequent use of cockney rhyming slang sometimes doesn't rhymes in a song's context. It also has an error - "became a proper stinkin'" comes after dinkin'.
The only prob I have with Mindset's lyric is that only the 1st couplette rhymes. Thereafter there are some twists & accent/dialectic ticks that can be readily accepted but after that it's all very approximate & sometimes not even that.
The answer is simple - don't call such lyrics rhymes - call them lyrics. That way they are what they are & not what they aren't.
Mindset's lyrics read well as poetic lyrics, & the creative telling of a story, but not as rhymes.
McCartney was an appalling rhymer - for example in Helter Skelter he rhymed ride with ride. There are lots of times such writing works but often, like in Helter Skelter, where it jars.
Alliteration is good too, but it isn't, technically, rhyming. It does create a certain swing with meter though.
There are a whole bundle of rhyming schemes that can make things seem easier for a poor rhymer except that the patterns then require extra concentration.
 
Jahn,
I had to go back & re read your last post thrice. The two lines you quote don't actually do what you describe. They have propulsive meter but not internal rhyming or alliteration.
 
McCartney was an appalling rhymer - for example in Helter Skelter he rhymed ride with ride. There are lots of times such writing works but often, like in Helter Skelter, where it jars.
Click to expand...


Hmmm...maybe a more recent listening is in order (for me) because I could have sworn the lyric went something like:

"When I get to the bottome I go back to the top of the SLIDE
where (and) I stop and I turn and I go for a ride"

wait...let me check the ipod...

Okay, we're both right on the white album it's sang as above, on the Beatles Anthology3 disc 1 he says "ride" twice on the demo.

J.P.
 
Jahn said:
One of the best rhyming pop tunes out there is "Up the Junction" by Squeeze. Just a relentless non-stop approach that keeps the rhyming structure simple, which reflects the blue-collar feel of the subject matter, but yet the words really carry truth in the emotions.
Click to expand...

Hell Yes!!!: 'I never thought it would happen / With me and the firl from Clapham',

or:

'I got a job with Stanley / He said I'd come in handy / He started me on Monday / So I had a bath on Sunday'

Quality stuff.

What seems to be really big in hip hop at the moment is homonymic rhymes - you know, two words that sound the same but mean different things. Damien Dempsey uses something like it: 'Twenty thousand feet / What an incredibly feat.' They tend to sound better than they look on paper.

Wilfred Owen, the World War One poet was quite the fan of half rhyme, words that sound almost pleasantly similar, but not quite: lake / state; care / bar; these can be used to add tension to a piece.

If you're into free verse, and feel that rhyme is totally alien to the concept you are attempting to portray, and may even detract from lyrics, take a look at Tom Waits and his 'spoken' poems: 9th and Hennepin, Circus, What's he Building, etc... Generally, it is more difficult to sing words that donh't rhyme than it is to speak them.

Example:

It's 9th and Hennepin, and all the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes...

The broken umbrellas are scattered like dead birds, and the steam is coming out of the grills like this whole damn town is going to blow.
 
Here're the lyrics to the latest song I have on Mysounclick/the MP3 Clinic.
It's an example of a lyric dominated by rhyming couplettes except in a change section where the rhyme is ditched for the couplete form & a different rhyming scheme is applied.
So basically AA BB, then AABC DDEC, followed by ABCB going back to basics.
All are true rhymes EXCEPT the last line which isn't really part of the lyric per se but rather a transcription of the ad lib at the end of the song.
THey seemed right to the singer at the time. That's where most false rhymes etc come in - during a vocalized rather than written - composing session. With accents, attenuation, strangulation & elongation as well as the American accent that seems to come through when most people try to sing these days, what sounds OK to an extemporizing vocalist/writer &/or the listener often don't translate to the page very well - a fact of life for most pop & rock lyrics really.

"Softdance"
(Berman Cochrane)

On the lounge with the Lizard King
Once the viper, now has no sting
Revealing detals of the plot
Of a legend dead but not forgot.

He'd fallen in love but had no friend
He'd lived on Cheap St. and guessed the end
The soft parade's for the chosen few
When the music's over break on through.

Unknown soldier lies cold in a box
Love's labour lost on a century fox
Excuse me I want you
Please tell me your name.

Unknown soldier lies cold in a box
Love's labour lost on a century fox
Excuse me I need you
All things are the same.

Ghosts crowd the indians on the highway
Selling souvenirs in the cold grey dawn
They're changing names to catch the sunrise
But the muisc's over and the curtain's drawn.

Tell me, tell me, what are you coming to,
Everybody wants to walk and talk like you
They've got the movement, they've got the stance
Texas bigbeat makes you want to dance.

And the band's stopped playing
And the music's gone
Set the sextant properly
Let the credits roll on.

Let them roll on
Let the credits roll on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top