Songs where the songwriter, usually for comic effect, sets up an obvious rhyme and then goes with a completely different word? The only examples I can think of are novelty/comedy type songs, like: Shaving Cream
Or a song about sodomy laws that includes the lyric “They think it’s sinful / I think it sucks / Having laws that tell us how we should…fornicate!”
Or in a sorta kinda example, that old playground song about Miss Suzie and her steamboat where “Hell” gets blended into “Hello operator” and the like.
Now, the one on the left works in a bank
And the one in the middle drives a truck
The one on the right’s an all-night deejay
And the guy in the rear got drafted
*
I always took that last line of the song to be a joke because the listener might assume he’s going to say “got fucked.” Not that Cash ever would have said that, but still. I could be totally wrong about this though.
Now I’m falling asleep
And she’s calling a cab
While he’s having a smoke
And she’s taking a drag
Now they’re going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it’s all in my head
But she’s touching his chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, letting me go
There once was a farmer who took a young miss
In back of the barn where he gave her a
Lecture on horses and chickens and eggs,
And told her that she had such beautiful
Manners that suited a girl of her charms,
A girl that he wanted to take in his
Washing . . .
– “Sweet Violets” (which my mom taught me only a few years ago)
This was the one I thought of when I read the OP. We had it on a Mitch Miller Sing-Along album when I was a kid, and I thought it was one of the funniest songs.
and yes, sometimes instead of watching TV in the evenings the family would sit around play a Mitch Miller album and sing along.
