Not sure if it originated in the blues, or what, but I always found it a fun technique, especially trying to cram a whole bunch of extra syllables into one line of lyrics so that sometimes they’re kinda spilling into the next line/stanza.
At 3:29:
At 2:47:
At: 2:17:
Bob Dylan - Po’ Boy (Official Audio) - YouTube
Not sure how to do the time-stamp trick, but clock in at 2:30 and listen to the “Freddy” portion.
mmm
ETA:
(thanks @Dr.Strangelove and @Guest-starring_Id)
Move the position to the place you want in the YouTube player, then right-click on the video and hit “Copy video URL at current time.” You’ll get something like this:
https://youtu.be/Q1Nx7ojiZv0?t=150
Or you can just manually add a “?t=XXX” at the end, where XXX is the time in seconds.
Great example.
Time-stamping:
ETA: ninja’ed.
There is Eminem: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Rap_God_sample.ogg
I’ve always enjoyed the part in Queen’s “We Are The Champions” when Freddy accelerates through “You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it I thank you all.”
In “Detectives”, EC’s lyrics are sort of mirroring the loose, syncopated triplet shuffle feel of the beat - in this case it’s the hi-hat cymbal that’s really leading the rhythm. He throws a lot of lines in that last verse whose syllables follow this pattern of syncopated variations on the triplet: “You think you’re alone…”, “visible shivers”, “ready to hear the worst” - it’s actually really clever the way the words are structured to fit the beat.
I wouldn’t really describe it as rushed though, because it’s all so carefully calculated to fit. But the example from We Are The Champions (“You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it I thank you all.”) is a better example IMO of “rushed” lyrics that bear no relation to the song’s rhythm but still work.
Dan Hicks “Shorty Falls In Love”
at 54 seconds “Particularly when I’m thinking whirlwinds of thoughts of you…”
“Ugly Woman”, by Roaring Lion:
A small, quick one, (that actually grinds down to slow) at 4:15:
Opening words of “Rocky Racoon”?
Ah! Here we go:
At 5:27
Two from ELO:
Second line of the last verse.
On one of the live albums, someone sings a harmony on top and it’s nice.
The bridge to this has to be a studio trick.
Yeah, the ELO was a good one.
Unfortunately, for the first video I got a “this video can’t be shown in your country” message.
Another Costello example:
You either shut up or get cut up, they don’t wanna hear about it
It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
Tryin’ to anesthetize the way that you feel
And the whole of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. There’s no song more rushed. Try to sing along…
The Association -
And when the morning of the warning’s passed
The gassed and flaccid kids are flung across the stars
The psychodramas and the traumas gone
The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars
Goddammit lady you know I ain’t lyin’ to ya, I’m only gonna tell you one tiiiime
A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re wanted and I meet you at the cemet’ry gates
That’s a good one I haven’t thought of! Cemetry Gates is my favorite Smiths song.
It doesn’t even have to be a song. This is a line of iambic pentameter from the play “Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury” by Charles Williams. (The speaker is Henry VIII. He is talking to Cranmer about Anne Boleyn.)
She has tá-/ken my í-/mage of her lóve, / and bró-/ken it. She díes.
Sixteen syllables in a line your English teacher told you should have ten.
How funny. Same here! May also be because it was the first Smiths song I had heard.