“And there ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe,
the light I never knowed.
And there ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe;
I’m on the dark side of the road…”
His Bobness, obviously. Dunno if it really counts as hilariously bad, though, cos I love it to death.
Near rhymes (e.g., blame and stain) don’t bother me. Silly rhymes (purple and syrple) delight me. What I hate are cliched rhymes and contrived rhymes. Don’t be obvious, don’t be stupid.
So anyone that rhymes “love” with “the stars above” or “life” with “cuts like a knife” oughtta be smacked, unless they’re thirteen, in which case I’ll make a minor exception. And anyone that makes rhymes like
I want you to know, I want you to know
That it’s to your house where I will go*
oughtta be duct-taped up in the interests of National Security.
Daniel
Sometimes I really like to play with bizarre rhymes in my songs, although I try my best to make them a little more intelligent than the examples here.
I think my most successful bizarre rhyme was in a whimsical story song of alien abduction, populated with outlandish rhymes, including such as:
And as I flew into the air my vision seemed to fade
I musta pissed my pants ‘cause I was so damn afraid
*And then the green men told me that I now belonged to them
And informed me of their diabolic plans and stratagems
*
*They mentioned how they’d planted microchips inside my head
And how the government made certain that the public was misled
*
and my personal favorite:
*Don’t know how long I lay there while they measured and they probed
But from now on I’ll always be a full-fledged xenophobe
*
Heh–reminds me of a song I wrote for class, based on the children’s book Beegu and sung to the tune of a familiar Christmas carol. I really like the first rhyme in it:
*O little Beegu alien
Who crash-landed on our earth:
You talk to people gaily and
They give you a wide berth.
You snuggle up with puppies,
but grownups kick you out.
You go down to the playground
And the children laugh and shout.
But teacher thinks you’re freaky
She kicks you from the group
The kids say goodbye tearfully,
Give you a Hula hoop.
You trudge away from town, yup
you’re feeling really sad.
Another spaceship beams you up:
Hooray! It’s mom and dad*
Instant classic, I tell ya.
Daniel
oh yes, and you can’t forget Arlo Guthrie’s classic rhyme in The Pickle Song
I don’t want a pickle
just wanna ride on a motor sickle
I don’t wanna die
Just wanna ride on my motor cy (cle)
And I don’t want a nickle
I just want to ride on my motor sickle
Of course, he did it on purpose poking fun at the very things we are talking about.
Yes – there are plenty of examples of humorous songs that use a rhyme that’s not a rhyme for comic effect. Tom Lehrer was a master of this:
When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner or l-
ater your friends will do the same for you.
And then there’s Cole Porter’s “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”:
The song goes on for ages like this, each strained pun funnier than the previous one.
It’s only awful when the lyricist isn’t deliberately going for laughs.
It’s the same sort of think with Guthrie: he knows the rhym
I hate country music. Songs like “On the Verge” by Collin Raye are the reason why:
It’s bad enough that he rhymes “me” with “me.” But changing the words around to force the rhyme just makes me want to clean out my ears with kerosene, then stick lit Q-tips into them.
How about these from I Don’t Wanna Wait by Paula Cole?
**So open up your morning light,
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive
Then see the peace in every eye…
**
Changing the grammar to force a rhyme, and then making it a bad rhyme, to boot? That’s just wrong!
Bette Davis Eyes, by Kim Carnes
“… she’s precocious,
and she knows just
what it takes to make a pro blush.”
I thought it was “crow blush.”
And on the subject of Professor Lehrer, we also have him to thank for The Folk Song Army:
More Bobness rhymes, from his totally sincere and inept years:
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.
where anything with a long ‘a’ counts as a rhyme. My God, what a heap of pretentious poeticisms he was.
Some of what’s being cited here as incompetent rhymes, however, seem to me to be deliberate off-rhymes, jokes, and perfectly good echo-rhymes.
I’ve never heard of that in a rock song before, but that’s not so awful.
U2
All Because Of You
I like the sound of my own voice
I didn’t give anyone else a choice
An intellectual tortoise
*
I mean, puhlease.
From the king of the wonderfully bad rhymes - Tom Lehrer
Smut
Smut, give me smut and nothing but, a dirty novel I can’t shut
If it’s uncut, and unsub-tle
Along the same lines, we have Jim Infantino (Jim’s Big Ego) and his wonderful song, You Rule:
Ah, what fun!
Moderator speaks: Please, folks, read the Forum Rules, and especially Rule 2. You might also want to read the Registration Agreement, from which I quote:
Please, do NOT quote the entire lyrics of a song. A couple of lines are OK, but any more than that gets into gray legal areas where we do not want to tread. If you want people to read the whole song, provide a link to a legit website that has copyright permission.
I have gone through several posts and deleted all but the first couple of lines quoted. That probably didn’t catch the awful rhymes that you were trying to illustrate, to which I say: tough. You want to emphasize bad rhymes, then quote those two lines, not the whole stanza or poem.
" To the window!..to the wall!..til the sweat drips from my balls! Lil Jon & The Eastide Boyz.
Lou Monte’s “Dominick the Donkey”: