So let’s talk about songs where the cracks in the songwriting process show through. We’re all used to songs where the lyricist makes it seem easy – everything rhymes, the lines scan, and the metaphors are relevant. Then there are the songs that bring out the latent English teacher in us all. Songs where it’s completely obvious that the artist said “meh, good enough” and flung their pencil or iPad against the wall.
Recently I was driving home and “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls was playing.
At which point I am invariably yanked out of the song.
“Litlle airplane”, bitches my internal English teacher. “Could you have picked a lazier adjective?”
I’m not thrilled with the choice of the word “fool” either, but “little” is clearly a word picked solely to make the line scan. It’s so irrelevant to the process of an airplane falling out of the sky. Just about anything would be better. “Crippled”. “Fragile”. “Flaming” “Broken”. Perfect? Maybe not. But at least it’s better than the adjectival equivalent of “Fuck it, good enough, this song is just filler anyway, I’m going to go get a beer.”
Another example: “The Eye” by Brandi Carlile is currently getting some airplay and it contains the following baffling simile:
“Yep”, muses Brandi with an i, “Chains die all the time. I’m sure of it. That makes this the ideal simile for our relationship. And ‘die’ rhymes with ‘eye’. That’s so perfect!”
BTW, even though everyone gives him mega grief about it, I’m giving Neil Diamond a pass on “And no one heard at all, not even the chair”, because that has always conjured up for me some poor, lonely, song-writing bastard living in a rented squalid hellhole furnished only with a rickety kitchen chair he dragged home from the curb one day. The fact that “chair” happens to rhyme with “there” is probably purely serendipitous.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with “little” in the first song. I’m not familiar with the whole piece, but specifying “little airplane” would differentiate between a private craft like a Cesna, probably piloted by a single hobbyist, versus a passenger jet or other, larger aircraft full of people. Seems an important distinction to me.
The second one is legitimately sloppy, although not for the reason you mention. She’s clearly mixing her metaphors, here, comparing love to a chain in one line, and a living thing in the very next. A better song would have followed one or the other of those metaphors just a little longer. On the other hand, if it were a better song, it wouldn’t have been recorded by Brandi.
“Four AM in the morning,” is inexcusable, particularly given that “Four o’clock in the morning,” scans just as well without being redundant.
My own contributions:
Black Sabbath, “Warpigs”: “‘Generals gather in their masses, just like witches at black…’ Fuck. What rhymes with masses? I know! Masses!”
The Beatles, “It’s All too Much”: “All the world’s a birthday cake. So let’s take a slice, but not too much!” Jesus, George, really? I guess that was just the scene back then: sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a sensible attitude towards sweets.
He rhymed “Facts is” and “taxes” with “Texas” Which would be stab inducing under any circumstances. But for which brilliant genius of lyricism did he cram that horrible rhyme in to make happen?
“He makes his livin’ off of the people’s taxes”
Wow, thank you Steve. This crucial bit of information fills in the story so I can really see it in my mind. I can’t tell you the number of songs I simply can’t enjoy without explicit information to confirm the municipal budget structure is like 99.999% of everywhere else.
Its the kind of writing he wrote you would come up with in second grade while walking up to the teacher’s desk to turn in the assignment you forgot about till 5 minutes ago.
And from the “why did they pick that word” category, “I’ll be home for Christmas”:
OK, first of all, who puts presents on the tree? I guess that ornaments are sometimes given as gifts, but most gifts end up under the tree, not on it. And to make it worse, the word “on” is stretched out long enough for an easy two syllables-- There’s even a note change in the middle. They’re trashing the meter and the meaning both at the same time.
That’s good enough for me. Rhymes don’t have to be perfect, and at least it finishes the thought properly without trying to hamfist a perfect rhyme into it.
The lyrics for Anita Ward’s hit Ring My Bell were, hopefully, written in less than five minutes. Possibly as the song was being recorded in the studio. The first verse contains this mindless gem:
Well lay back and relax while I put away the dishes. Ok, sure, take your time.
The second verse is even worse. Rhyming? Meter? Who gives a shit:
The night is young and full of possibilities
Well come on and let yourself be free
My love for you, so long I’ve been savin’
Tonight was made for me and you
