“Friends” and “bends” are exact rhymes. Anything else is not, so it’s clear that those are the correct words.
I don’t think “Benz” and “friends” is a jarringly bad rhyme.
Not like “Texas,” “facts is,” “justice,” and “taxes,” for instance.
(I, too, thought it was “definitely” and “Benz” until today.)
I keep seeing an online ad for Carvana, that depicts a llama watching a farmer drive up in his beat-up old pickup truck, with his passenger window down and his dog’s head lolling in the wind.
Next scene is the llama going to a computer, then a Carvana truck delivering a new SUV. The final scene is the SUV driving down the road, with the llama’s head stuck through a sunroof.
For some reason, I had it in my mind that the llama and the dog were buying the farmer a new truck for Christmas. Saw the ad again yesterday, and finally realized that the llama was jealous of the dog, and she bought the farmer the SUV so that she too could stick her head out of the truck. 
Specifically, Rue McClanahan (born Feb '34) was around the same age as her character - a full decade younger than Estelle Getty (July '23) who was a year younger than Betty White and Bea Arthur (Jan and May '22).
So, when they started the show, Rue was a 51 year old playing someone in her early 50s, Estelle was a 62 year old playing her mid 80s, and Betty and Bea were 63 year olds playing their early 50s.
As a kid, I did not realize that Betty and Bea were supposed to be in their early 50’s. I guess I figured everyone except Estelle Getty was playing their age and it was just a wide range of “golden” ages together.
It isn’t bad. It’s just not exact. Usually lyricists go for exact rhymes.
Like the time Ozzy rhymed “masses” with “masses.” You don’t get much more exact than that.
There is virtually no difference in how I pronounce Benz and bends.
I was going to say that although I don’t know what most lyricists go for, I don’t think one person in a thousand would naturally pronounce (or sing) “bends” in a way that could be clearly distinguished from “Benz.”
And I admit that, having read it, it’s a pretty clever turn of phrase. But I’d wager that >99% of people who’ve only heard the song without reading the lyrics took it to be “Benz,” not “bends.”
I never knew it was “Tiffany-twisted”. I always wondered why the word “definitely” was being said in such a strange way. Huh.
I thought it was supposed to be late 50’s for Betty and Bea when they started, and that Rue’s character actually was a few years younger than they were. I don’t know why I thought that, but it still seems right to me.
A radio quiz show I listen to once did a round of song lyrics; the host gave one line and panelists had to answer with the following line (for full points, they had to sing it). One of the lines was
Her mind is Tiffany twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz
The panelists did not get it. Just that one line, in isolation, spoken, and without music, could be hard to identify.
There were also
We can try to understand the New York Times’ effect on man
and
There’s a man in evening clothes, how he got here I don’t know
I think there’s a photo of Ozzy under “Chutzpah” in the dictionary…
Fun! Someone should start a thread.
I got the first one but not the second.
Same here. The first is Stayin’ Alive but not sure of the second. Nowhere Man, maybe?
It’s Twistin’ the Night Away.
(No, I didn’t google it. 
)
Man, you ought to see him go
Twisting the night away.
Didn’t need to look it up.
Are Benz and bends pronounced differently in your dialect? They’re identical in mine.
(It’s easy to get distracted by spelling, but really pay attention to the position of your mouth parts as you pronounce each one — and say them as you would in normal speech).
I find that my tongue makes firmer and slightly longer contact with the roof of my mouth on “bends.” It may affect the pronunciation to a small degree, but not really enough to make a significant difference to a listener.
Perhaps, but “bends” and “friends” is also a visual rhyme, both ending with the same four letters. It is a cleaner rhyme than “Benz,” which doesn’t look the same.
Even better, “bends” is a pun in this context. Much superior wordplay.