One my favorite songs recently has been “Killing the Blues” by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. One of the unusual things about this song is its lack of rhyme.
What other songs, in English, don’t use rhyme at all?
I think this must depend on the genre of music one listens to, because as I glance at my iPod, I see tons of bands/songwriters who don’t use rhymes in their lyrics. Here’s a random Radiohead verse, for example:
Just as you take my hand
Just as you write my number down
Just as the drinks arrive
Just as they play your favourite song
As your blather disappears
No longer wound up like a spring
Before you’ve had too much
Come back and focus again…
ETA: Even more “traditional” songwriters don’t always use rhymes – here’s a random Elvis Costello lyric:
Take your tiny feet out of your mother’s shoes
Or there is going to be a terrible scene
It’s not just the lipstick drawn on crooked
When they find how wicked we are
How wicked we have been
How I’ve been tempted
Frank Mills, from the musical Hair, is a good example of this.
The meter’s all screwy too.
Several of Sting’s songs don’t rhyme. Fields of Gold, for example. Not a rhyme to be found.
Simon and Garfunkel’s America is the first example I think of for song’s featuring free verse.
Folk Song, by Bongwater was one of my favorites, although it’s rather dated now from its number early '90s references.
Incubus songs are full of all sorts of non-rhyming goodness.
Devil in Jersey City by Coheed and Cambria doesn’t really have any rhymes. OK, he follows the line “follow me home” with “fuck me back home,” but that’s really stretching it.
Nearly all of Robert Wyatt’s lyrics for Soft Machine, Matching Mole, and as solo. I don’t think he ever wrote a lyric that rhymed.
For instance (From one version of “Moon in June”; Wyatt changed lyrics every time he sung it):
Perhaps you’d like this little ditty by Oscar Brand, A Clean Song?
Nice Bongwater reference!
sucking and shopping, sucking and shopping, sucking and shopping…
Does “Polka Dot Undies” count?
The Beatles’ “Across the Universe”.
Frank Zappa’s “Penis Dimension,” “Dental hygiene Dilemma,” and several other songs in 200 Motels.
Hmmm, the only one I can think of that does rhyme is The Final Cut.
Great example. That is an exceptional song, I do believe.
As gallows fodder says, pretty much everything Thom Yorke has ever written. E.g.
God, that’s a beautiful song. [/aside]
Howard Jones rarely rhymed, and Stevie Wonder sometimes doesn’t rhyme.
A whole bunch by Bjork. But one of my favorites is “All is Full of Love.”
Most of Dylan’s “It’s a Hard Rain That’s Gonna Fall” doesn’t rhyme…except the “blue-eyed son/darling young one” part.
A whole bunch of Pearl Jam.
Some Pixies
Some Gang of Four
Some Wire
I’m sure I’m missing a bunch, but I really don’t pay attention to which bands rhyme and which don’t.