Dammit, I came in this thread specifically to mention these off-rhymes from “Golddigger” and you beat me to it!
Still, it’s worth seeing these in more context:
She was ‘sposeta buy ya shorty TYCO with yo’ money
She went to the doctor, got lypo with yo’ money
She walkin’ around lookin like Micheal with yo’ money
Should’ve got that insured, got GEICO for yo’ moneyyyyy
First time I heard that, i tripped for about five minutes.
My favorite clever use of a non-rhyme comes from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, sung about the egotistical and boorish Gaston:
No…I think it’s, “He’s such a tall, dark, strong and handsome brute!”
Well, how about a true classic?
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
Through the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry!
-William Blake
Here’s another that maybe doesn’t count because it’s sounds tongue in cheek, from Dire Straits’ Industrial Disease:
I don’t know how you came to get those Betty Davis eyes [but pronounced “eez”]
But worst of all young man you’ve got Industrial Disease!
When he sings “eez” you can almost hear him wince.
No mention of “Summer Girls” yet?
:rolleyes:
…and so on. Not just non-rhymes. Really arbitrary bad non-rhymes.
Might I be the only person in the known world who hates “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”:
Just had to give a shout-out to a fellow JBE fan!! Suddenly, I don’t feel so alone anymore. Grelby, you rule!
No, that’s the point. It isn’t, but it should be. I think it’s great because the implication is the townspeople think of him as a prince, but he’s really a brute.
Maybe I just filled it in myself. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen it.
no doubt, but he was obviously guilty on his “Coming ino Los Angeles” and deserves censure, drugs or no drugs.
Not a rhyme, but…
“And no one heard at all, not even the chair”
???
I thought of this old thread earlier today when I heard “Hot Child in the City”:
Come on down to my place baby
We’ll talk about love
Come on down to my place woman
We’ll make lo-ove!
Sheesh.
Those purveyors of schmaltzy 70s songs, complete with velvet suits, Afro hair-dos and the synchronised step-forward (and thence backwards), the kings of corn, The Stylistics, have my nomination:
“Precious friend,
With you I’ll always have a friend,
You’re someone who I can depend,
To walk a path that sometimes bends.”
Ungrammatical and crummy poetry - a double-whammy. Nice song, though: You Make Me Feel Brand New.
Interestingly, the next verse begins:
“Without you,
Life has no meaning or rhyme”
John Hiatt…
Don’t have to humble yourself to me
I ain’t your judge or your king
And baby, you know you ain’t no queen of sheba
And we may not even have our dignity, no
This could be just a prideful thing
But baby, we can choose you know,
We ain’t no amoebas
But are you ready for this thing called love
[q]I forgot one of my favorites. I’m a big Billy Joel fan (and I won’t even touch on We Didn’t Start the Fire), and one of his songs has a rhyme that just makes you slap yourself in the head:
[/q]
I think you missed that one. It’s “parlez vous Francais” which rhymes nicely with “gone away.”
I loves me some Insane Clown Posse but sometimes they can’t rhyme worth a damn.
“Psychopatchic records are geniuses
Get off our penises”
(from 85 Bucks An Hour)
“I met Pete Rose and stabbed him twice in his nipples
I’m Violent J and I stab people”
(from I Stab People)
“I said ‘Get off my dick, I ain’t a savior…
I’m what you call a juggalo and I all I want is my flava’”
(from I Want My Shit)
last but not least
“Chicken faced bitch, two or three good teeth
But if ass was sugar, she’s a big fuzzy peach”
I’m sure I could fill the rest of the thread with bad ICP rhymes but I’ll spare you all.
Similar to Neil Diamond’s “sang and brang” is Kristopherson’s "Best of All Possible Worlds:
There’ still lots of drinks that I ain’t drunk
There’s lots of pretty thoughts that I ain’t thunk.
And Lord, there’s still so many lonely girls
In this best of all possible worlds.
Speaking of possible worlds, from “Pippin”:
Once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds
One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds.
Speaking of “world,” rhyming it with “unfurled” has grown to be a tiresome cliche.
The best example of silly yet admirable rhymes has to be Don McLean’s On The Amazon
Wild duodenum are lurking in the trees
And the jungle swarms with green apostrophes
Oh, the Amazon is calling me
I’m sorry, but Emily Dickinson and her “slant rhymes” belong on this list. Personally, I loathe her poems, so maybe I am biased, but when does
“A vest that, like the bodice, danced
To the immortal tune,—
Till those two troubled little clocks
Ticked softly into one.”
sound good to anyone?
From a 1932 song:
All I possess is yours
I can’t resist be-cause
You’ve Got Me in the Palm of Your Hand
Now there used to be quite a few pop-song rhymes that assumed a sort of fancy Eastern r-dropping pronunciation – they’d rhyme saw with for and like that. But the sounds were close enough that you got the point.
This lyric goes a step further and rhymes two words that didn’t rhyme in most people’s everyday speech at all (“yers…becuz”?). The only spoken accent where yours and because would come close to rhyming would be full-on Brooklynese, which, considering the origins of most Tin Pan Alley lyricists, isn’t all that far-fetched.
Hoobastank’s “The Reason” makes my head hurt. Technically, it rhymes all right, but the singer belts the end of each line as if he’s written the greatest lyrics of all time:
I’ve found a reason for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee
To change who I used to beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
A reason to start over neeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww
and the reason is youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Baby Jesus we(eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)eps.