From “Wrapped Around Your Finger”:
You consider me the young apprentice
Caught between the scylla and charibdes
Which is strange, because not only do those words not rhyme, he doesn’t even sing “charibdes” so that it sounds anything like “apprentice,” but rather more like “car-bode-is.”
Actually, the lyric (from “Gonna Make You Sweat”) is:
Guys grab a girl, don’t wait, make the twirl
It’s your world and I’m just a squirrel
Tryin’ to get a nut to move your butt to the dance floor
Not that it’s fantastic that way, but it’s improved over what you’d thought, IMO. I always heard it as “…Tryin’ to get a nut, so move your butt to the dance floor…”, like he’s got to work hard to get what he wants, so it’s time to hit the dance floor and find somebody.
God I hope not…and let’s not forget:
“I am,” I said
To no one there
An no one heard at all
Not even the chair
The true horror being, he apparetly couldn’t think of a better rhyme for…“there”.
In the tradition of Lehrer, I’ve always thought the following rhyme by the ska/punk band Pain in “Song of the Seven-Inch Cowboy” (odd song…done 100% in the Gene Autry singing cowboy style) is priceless:
Well, my pop told me it don’t matter where a fella goes,
He can sail through icy straits or misty archipelagoes…
In the category of “is it bad or is it good?” I present for you All Saints’ Never Ever, which alters the chorus between the UK and American pronunciation of the letter Z:
Personally I think it’s quite clever, though others think it’s a compromise.
“I don’t want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want a tickle
'Cause I’d rather ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
cle.”
I can’t resist flinging out there some of my favorite Lehrer song, “Smut”…
I’ve never quibbled
If it was ribald
I would devour
Where others merely nibbled
Like the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense
To be smut it must be ut-terly without redeeming social importance
Come on, people. All these posts and only two mentions of Sondheim?
He can out-Gilbert Gilbert (see the already-mentioned “Please Hello” from Pacific Overtures), out-Lehrer Lehrer (see “Bobby and Jackie and Jack” from Merrily We Roll Along) and out-Porter Porter (see “Together Wherever We Go” from Gypsy.) (In fact Sondheim tells the story of playing the song for a despondent Cole Porter. The sharp-minded Porter was mentally keeping pace with the lyrics until the rhyme “…Wherever I go, I know she goes. Amigos! Together…” Even Porter couldn’t see the rhyme “Amigos” coming, and smiled broadly).
The extra genius of Sondheim is not the rhymes he makes, but the ones he doesn’t. For example in Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett describes here dreadful meat pies as follows:
…Is that just revolting?
All greasy and gritty.
It looks like it’s molting and taste like…
Well pity
A woman alone…
If you’re mentally one step ahead of the lyric – and SS makes it purposely easy for you to be here – your mind anticipates the third line to be “… well shitty!” But he shifts gears at the last second to trip you up, all the while keeping in perfect context of the song. You end up laughing to yourself for falling in the trap.
Another, even better example is in A little Night Music. The sexually frustrated young divinty student Henrik is loathing himself while playing the cello:
Henrik… Who is Henrik?
Oh, that lawyer’s son, the one who mumbles.
Short and boring,
Yes, he’s hardly worth ignoring,
And who cares if he’s all dammed–
I beg your pardon–
Up inside?
The genius is in the phrase “all dammed.” When you hear it it sounds like “all damned.” You think that the prudish young man has just gotten so disgusted with himself he swore. But he hasn’t! He’s “all dammed… up inside.” Again SS has tricked you for trying to get ahead of him.
“It’s a porn utopia,
a cornucopia
of warm fallopia.
My dandy voice
makes the most anti-choice
grannies panties moist.”
“To boldly rap into the outer reaches. This doubter teaches defining God as aligning a divining rod with a hot chick’s reclining bod. 'Cause life is fickle. Hellish. Anemic. Sickle cellish. Dude, you’ll get chopped up like pickle relish. And when we perish, we’re–what’s the term, dude? Worm food.”
This bizarro Jersey suburban braggadocio courtesy MC Paul Barman. Who’s a genius or somethin’.
How could we discuss pretentious and tortured rhymes from the Police without including this gem: He starts to shake and cough…
Just like the
Old man in
That book by Nabokov…
Which book by Nabokov? The one with the old guy and the young chick?? Ooo deep! Not only does it rhyme, but it’s applicable! Shut up, Sting.
My personal favorite rhyme in song is from Warren Zevon– She really worked me over good.
She was a credit to her gender.
She put me through some changes, Lord.
Sort of like a Waring Blendor[sup]TM[/sup].
Hee hee hee.
IMO, the best rhymes are those that are hidden, either in phrasing or by changing the rhythm.
The best example I can think of is in What’s The Use Of Wondrin’, from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel:
And when he wants your kisses, you will give them to the lad,
And anywhere he leads you will walk.
And anytime he needs you, you’ll go running there like mad.
He’s your fella, and you love him,
And all the rest is talk.
The rhyme of walk and talk looks obvious and cliched in print, but after the third line, the song goes from 4/4 to free time, and the last line is drawn out so that rhythmically the “talk” is not in time with the “walk.” It sounds like an ending that doesn’t rhyme with anything previous in the song. I listened to it several times before I noticed that it did actually rhyme.