Columnists
The reason of rhyme
The late rock iconoclast Frank Zappa (father of the legendary band the Mothers of Invention) once stated that “all the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
He was echoing the sentiments expressed a century and a half earlier by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was troubled by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations, and who worried that musical genius would become a thing of the past. (Obviously, neither of them had predicted the onset of rap, which gave the words “music” and “tune” a whole new direction in which to grow).
But now the focus has turned to the finitude of musical lyrics. According to David Hart of the Canadian Lyricists’ Foundation, lyricists are just plain running out of new rhyming words and phrases.
“Just look at the word ‘love,’ for example,” he told The Times. “That’s the most common word in pop music. Yet how many rhymes does it have? ‘Above,’ ’Dove,’ ‘Glove,’ ‘Shove,’ ‘Of,’—but that’s about it. It’s not much to work with, yet lyricists have to earn a living somehow by coming up with something unique.”
So we took up Mr. Hart’s assertion and searched common popular music words in the online RhymeZone rhyming dictionary, and discovered that, sure enough, he has a point. Take “marriage,” for instance. “Carriage” is an obvious rhyme, but who dares to try it and risk being accused of stealing from Sammy Cahn (Love and Marriage) and Harry Dacre (Daisy Bell)? Cahn even took “disparage” for good measure. There’s nothing left.
We fared little better with “wedding.” It may be tough sledding, it’s something I’m dreading, the fever is spreading, better than a beheading, look where you’re treading—none of the rhymes work that well.
Mr. Hart points out that the shortage of rhymes means that the good ones are already used far too often. “Take” ‘kiss.’ RhymeZone gives you over 500 examples of songs in which writers use the rhyming word ‘this,’ almost 300 examples of ‘miss,’ and over 100 uses of ‘bliss.’ It’s a daunting task to come up with something fresh.
“When there aren’t enough rhymes to match the sentiments, is it any wonder our divorce rate is so high?” asserts Mr. Hart.
So what do Mr. Hart and the CLF want done about it? “We’ve got to introduce some new words into our language,” he says. “Take the the word ‘moon.’ We’re all tired of songs that say ‘I soon swoon to the tune of the moon in June’ So why not create the occasional brand new word—like “hoon” to rhyme with moon. It would spice things up a bit, and allow songwriters a chance to put their own meanings into the words.”
We challenged Mr. Hart on that point, noting that RhymeZone lists some 102 exact rhymes for “moon.” His response was swift. “So what would you have me do?” he says. “Write a song in which I say ‘I’m just a buffoon for using a spittoon by the light of the moon’? The words have got to be emotionally evocative, not just technically compliant. And they just aren’t there.”
What about near-rhymes then? Couldn’t CLF members resort to rhyming, say, “moon” with “gloom,” and thereby expand the inventory of rhymes? “Absolutely not,” says Hart. “We have standards to maintain. Once we let near-rhymes in the next thing you know it will be blank verse; and then you just open the floodgates for any Tom, Dick or Hoagy to become a lyricist.”
Mr. Hart is bent on seeing change come down from the top. He is canvassing his members and will select 10 key words that require new rhymes—although he acknowledges that “love,” “marriage,’’ “wedding,” “kiss” and “moon” will likely be on almost every lyricist’s shortlist. His aim is then to press the government formally to legislate one new official rhyming word for each key word.
So the new word “tove” might become an approved rhyme for “love,” and “yedding” an approved rhyme for “wedding.” The government won’t try to put meaning into the words: that will be the lyricists’ job. The CBC would then be expected to put the songs using these new rhyming words in constant play. Mr. Hart anticipates that “you’ll see an explosion of creativity from Canadian lyricists as a result of this measure.”
Frank Zappa would no doubt be tickled pink.
Comments (0)