Painful Rhyme: Difference between revisions

''I don't know why I spend my time

''Writing songs I can't believe

 

{{quote|'''Berty:''' I meant the fact that it rhymes, Jeeves. "Sweden." "Needin'."

 

{{quote|'''Aaron:''' ''Don't talk about love

''"As certain as push comes to shove,

''You will pine for the person

 

A [[Music Trope]]. It's when you hear a rhyme in a song, or read it in a poem, and you're compelled to cringe at how painfully it's forced in. Maybe the sentence was rearranged into grammatical nonsense to accommodate it, or the rhythm was broken, or maybe it verges on nonsensical. Maybe words had to be intentionally mispronounced to make it rhyme, or an unlikely metaphor invented. In any case, they were really better off not bothering to make it rhyme. Bonus points if it doesn't even quite rhyme, or if they're [[Rhyming with Itself|just repeating rather than rhyming.]] It's common for amateur poets to do this, since they often rigidly adhere to an "ABAB" rhyme scheme, forcing them to twist their verse into grotesque contortions.

 

[[Sublime Rhyme]] is not the opposite of this trope, so don't get confused.

 

* This [[Theme Tune Rap|song]] from an old ''Zelda'' [[Memetic Mutation|commercial]]:

* ''[[Transformers|Traaan-sformers!]]''

* The General of Car insurance fame just cannot rhyme at all.

** That was its jingle for a while, but when it decided to get a new one that focuses on serving its customers online, General still couldn't fix its rhyming problems:

* The Puffs tissue commercials. They'll try to make it all rhyme, and then ''one'' line (typically at the end) will be jarring as it won't rhyme and will have a completely different rhythm/metre than the others, because they suddenly realise they have to cram a lot of information into only one line of verse.

 

* Lampshaded in ''[[Fables]]'': Frau Totenkinder's spell/Takes a normal message and turns it into doggerel.

* [[Etrigan]] The Demon, in [[The DC Universe]], traditionally speaks in rhyme. Under a skilled writer, such as [[Alan Moore]] (who set the rule that The Demon must speak in [[Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter]]), his speech is great, even lyrical at times. Under not-so-skilled writers... it's this trope.

* Who can forget the rather painful first "boss battle" in the first ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' comic book, where almost everything a character says rhymes?

 

* In ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'', there's the Knights of the Round Table, whose "shows are for-mid-able, but many times we're given rhymes that are quite un-sing-able".

* ''[[The Wizard of Oz]]'': the brilliant Yip Harburg makes this part of the film's whimsical style, via [[Refuge in Audacity]]. The Cowardly Lion in particular carries many of them:

** From "If I Only Had The Nerve":

** "The King Of The Forest" manages to rhyme "brontosaurus" with "king o' the fores'", "hippopotamus" with "top to bottom-us" and "elephant" with "cellophant".

 

* In [[Peter S. Beagle]]'s ''[[The Last Unicorn (novel)|The Last Unicorn]]'', Lir's love poetry to "Amalthea" uses this as a form of [[Stylistic Suck]] (since his poetry is ''supposed'' to be terrible):

{{quote|"It's certainly heartfelt," she said. "Can you really rhyme 'bloomed' with 'ruined?'"}}

* ''[[Wayside School|Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger]]'' has at least four [[Stylistic Suck]] examples as Mrs. Jewels asks the kids to write poems about colors. These probably stand out the most:

{{quote|'''"Yellow" by Kathy'''

 

* A passage from the English translation of Tove Jansson's ''[[The Moomins|Comet In Moominland]]'':

{{quote|Then Snufkin said: "You could write a poem about this. What about:

"Saw a mermaid--didn't caught her," suggested Sniff, blowing his nose.

"That's not true, not grammar, and it doesn't even rhyme properly", said Snufkin, and the subject dropped. }}

* In the [[P. G. Wodehouse]] book ''Uncle Fred in the Springtime'' the Duke has a particular hatred for the song ''The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond'' because it attempts to rhyme "again" with "Lomond" and he plans to toss eggs at the gardener who keeps whistling it under his window.

* In ''Wolves of the Calla'', fifth in ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' series, "The Rice Song" is essentially made of this. King describes some of the rhymes in it as "rape rhymes" (one can only hope this is a technical term), "words that didn't rhyme at all but were forced to for a moment within the borders of the song". The words Eddie can make out follow:

 

* In ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'', the main character mocks someone by pointing out how godawful it is. Many times. With FEELING.

** And to be fair, he should know, because there are a number of times where he breaks into rhymed verse in the middle of a conversation, though one was with a member of the Fae and the other was probably intentional.

 

* One thing that might lead to this a lot is cultural differences. Something that might rhyme with British pronunciation might not in, say, American English, which will make the rhymes sound forced or painful.

** And it works the other way round. [[British Accents|If your speech patterns emphasize the "g" in "ing"]], the following lines are pretty awesome. But with the wrong prnounciation... instant [[Narm]].

* Most all of [[Ogden Nash]]'s poetry uses these, but much like [[Tom Lehrer]] below, they usually add a sense of playfulness to the poems. See "The Tale of Custard the Dragon":

* In his satirical epic poem ''[[Lord Byron's Don Juan|Don Juan]]'', [[Lord Byron]] often used rhymes for comedic effect, sometimes with [[Lampshade Hanging]]. One of the most flagrant (other than rhyming "Ju-an" with "new one"), was this one:

** At the start of the poem, he also took a swipe at his personal enemy, Robert Southey, who was the current Poet Laureate, by rhyming "Laureate" with "[[The Bible|Iscariot]]". That one was so bad, he even expressed doubts about it in a footnote.

* The book ''[[The Legend of Rah and the Muggles]]'' features a poem that not only [[Padding|goes on for five pages with no relevance to the plot]], but features gems such as:

** (If you're wondering how this scans, you're not the only one.)

** Equally hilarious is his Address to the Reverend George Gilfillan, which such immortal lines as:

...

...

* Robert Browning's excellent poem ''The Pied Piper of Hamlin'', which practically begs to be read aloud for fun energy and its many excellent rhymes, uses several such rhyme-pairs, as if to torment the reader.

** [[Depraved Bisexual|Aleister Crowley's]] [http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/liber067.pdf Ascension Day and Pentecost] is an [[Affectionate Parody]] of Browning (as well as a colossal [[Take That]] to Christianity) but it is also a colossal exercise in excruciating rhymes. The author claimed that he made a list of every word in the English language that was said to be "unrhymable" and found a rhyme (of sorts) for every single one of them. Some choice examples:

...

** In [[G. K. Chesterton|Chesterton's]] ''Return of Don Quixote'', those last two rhymes were why Browning was included in John Braintree's list of Victorian Giants who ought to have met up with Jack the Giant-Killer.

* In high school English, this editor was exposed to the work of a 17th century American colonial poetess whose name now escapes him. One of the sonnets he had to read for an assignment rhymed "forever" with "persevere", which, according to a footnote, was pronounced with a short E on the final syllable at the time. This editor still considered it a forced rhyme.

* Although Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, one of the most famous Hispanic poetesses in the world, wrote quite a bit of excellent poetry in her life, she did slipped in this kind of rhyme a couple of times. One of her poems, for example, resorts to writing "cruel" as "cruël", an archaic Spanish trick to add an extra syllable.

** That's not really archaic Spanish. All the diaeresis means is "pronounce these vowels separately", and it's not that unusual to see "cruel" pronounced as "croo-el", especially in British works.

*** Or in ''Good King Wenceslas'', to rhyme with "fuel." (which it still doesn't)

* "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds" by James McIntyre:

* [[Emily Dickinson]]. Yeah, yeah, classic poetry. But just read a few of the most famous ones, and you'll notice an annoying tendency for the words to look like they rhyme without actually rhyming at all. As well as rhyming words with themselves.

** This is called slant rhyme, and it's legit. Of course, it's also entirely possible that she was just using it as an excuse not to think of better rhymes...

*** If you pronounce "tulle" the French way, it gets a bit better.

* Dylan Thomas [[Lampshaded]] his own use of half rhyme in one of his poems:

* [[Shel Silverstein]]'s poem ''[http://poemsbyshelsilverstein.blogspot.com/2009/01/poem-by-shel-silverstein-pgs-46-47.html Pinocchio]'' does this intentionally with nearly every rhyme in it, by constantly appending "-io" to the ends of words. Such as:

** Possibly inspired by the poem "Antonio" by Laura E. Richards, which includes such (again, intentional) gems as the following:

** Similar to [[Ogden Nash]]'s:

* A note: Slant rhymes are almost always, if a poet is using them right, ''meant'' to be jolting. Messing with people's expectations is one of the things that can distinguish poetry from nursery rhymes and ad jingles.

* These cringe-inducing lines nominally written about Sir John Hill the apothecary:

* ''The Passionate Shepherd To His Love'' by [[Christopher Marlowe]] not only tries to rhyme "love" with "prove" and "move", but also "roses" with "posies" and "falls" with "madrigals". If that last one doesn't seem like such a big deal, in a follow-up poetic parody by a different poet "madrigals" is made to rhyme with "canals", which further compounds things.

** Considering that was over 400 years ago (before the Great Vowel Shift), are we sure those weren't perfect rhymes back then? (The "love"/"prove"/"move" thing wasn't unique to Marlowe: [[Shakespeare]] did it too.) When Pope (much later) rhymed "tea" with "say", it wasn't a mistake; it really did rhyme.

* At one point in the ''very odd'' comedic poem ''Greybeards At Play'', [[G. K. Chesterton]] randomly rhymes "[[wikipedia:Hanno the Great|Hanno]]" with "piano." The next stanza is ''also'' pretty painful (probably intentionally), despite being an apology for doing it:

* At least [http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.1.first.html one translation] of Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', among other crimes, rhymes "unstable" with "unnavigable", "most" with "lost", "bent" with "punishment", "binds" with "winds" (as in, the thing that blows, not the kind of "winds" that would actually rhyme), "alone" with "down", "floods" with "Gods", "food" with both "flood" and, later, "mud".

* Famously in Blake's ''The Tyger'':

** Some historians and linguists have credited this to his Cockney accent, in which the rhyme is proper.

 

 

* [[Prince]]'s "Damn U"

* The frighteningly bad pop dance song "Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex":

* [[Tom Lehrer]] was a master of these... but rather than making you cringe, they make you laugh because they're just so 'out there' that it can't be taken seriously.

** Take the first verse of "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs We Will All Go Together When We Go]":

** "The Folk Song Army" provides another good example:

(spoken) Excuse me, ''rhyne''. }}

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYW50F42ss8 "The Elements"] was written to incorporate the then-known elements of the periodic table into the Major General's Song from ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]''. Just as in the real periodic table, a space is left at the end for discoveries after the time of writing. Lyrically, this resulted in:

*** The heavy Boston accent on "Harvard" and "Discarvard" still fails to subvert this.

*** He's been known to toss in a final rhyme at the end of the song. From ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY Poisoning Pigeons in the Park]'':

*** And how can we forget...

*** And of course...

**** And the internal rhyme in "everybody say his own Kyrie Eleison"

* "Close to the Edge" by [[Yes]] begins with the lyric:

** From "Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman":

* The [[Black Eyed Peas]]' "Where Is the Love":

** It actually [[Mondegreen|sounds like]] "People livin' like they ain't got no ''llamas''"...

** Also, "Don't Phunk with My Heart" is pretty close to 100% this trope. For example:

** (Note that "believe" is pronounced "be-leev-uh", to make it rhyme with "amnesia")

** "Imma Be" has a particularly jarring example: the words rhyme (mostly), but the final line immediately falls apart if you think about it.

{{quote|''Imma be brilliant with my millions

* "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri

** and in the chorus

** not that

* "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by [[Death Cab for Cutie]]

* [[Nickelback]] has one in "Someday":

* [[Steve Miller]]'s "Take the Money and Run":

* One of the worst examples has to be a line from the Zac Brown Band song "Sic 'Em on a Chicken":

** (Apparently "preserves" is supposed to be rhymed with "deserves". Don't ask me how.)

*** You can ask me: in most of the South, they would be pronounced pruh-zerves and duh-zerves, so it makes sense for a Georgia-based band to pronounce it as such.

* [[Sex Pistols]]' "Anarchy in the UK":

** They were punks, they ''wanted'' to offend.

*** With the accent, it sounds more like Anarch-EST.

* [[Mariah Carey]]'s "Heartbreaker":

** Sting's "Russians":

* The Kaiser Chiefs are well known for using old-fashioned words like "thee", largely to facilitate rhymes like

** In the same song, they also manage to rhyme "beaten", "policeman", "Smeaton" and "leodensian".

** The Kaiser Chiefs do have the excuse of being from Leeds there; "thee" is still used in [[Oop North|Yorkshire dialect.]]

* In his book ''[[Dave Barry]]'s Book of Bad Songs'', Dave specifically calls out "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers:

::Dave also says that "if I were the Supreme Being, I would have a rule that you could not get into heaven if you had ever deliberately rhymed 'good' with 'world'."

* Tim McGraw's "Refried Dreams" contains the line "Shooting tequila, wanting to kill him." Yes, it's supposed to rhyme.

* Kenny Chesney's "Dancin' for the Groceries" is a pretty good song about a desperate [[Single Mom Stripper|single mom who resorts to stripping in order to support her kids]] (hence the title). It does, however, contain a cringe-worthy rhyme in the chorus: "In sequins and in laces, she's dancing for the braces." Ugh.

* [[ZZ Top]], on "Tush":

* Neil Diamond's "I Am I Said":

** [[Dave Barry]], in a column which would lead to a massive amount of hate mail from Neil Diamond fans ''and'' provide the seed for the famous Bad Songs Survey via readers who agreed with him, complained about the lameness of this line:

{{quote|Is Neil telling us he's ''surprised'' that the chair didn't hear him? Maybe he expected the chair to say, "Whoa, I heard THAT." My guess is that Neil was really desperate to come up with something to rhyme with "there", and he had already rejected "So I ate a pear", "Like Smokey the Bear", and "There were nits in my hair."}}

{{quote|The line comes later in the song; it goes "Songs she ''sang'' to me, songs she ''BRANG'' to me.'" ''Ugh''! It's "''brought''", you horrible little American!}}

* LFO's "Summer Girls" is quite possibly the worst example of this in history, considering most of the song is just plot relevant lyric + random thing which rhymes:

** or

** Practically every line in the song qualifies, but this one deserves special mention for being completely nonsensical and still having to mispronounce a word:

*** This is probably a deliberately poorly written song, perhaps a case of [[Refuge in Audacity]] in its forced rhyming and ridiculousness.

**** [[Word of God]] says it was a joke song, not meant for public consumption, written to help the late singer Rich Cronin [[Creator Breakdown|get over his disappointment with the music industry and think about his youth]], and filled with inside humor. He said that if he knew it would be a commercial single, then the "[[Narm|Chinese food always makes me sick]]" part would not have been used.

** Those kind of pale in comparison to George Harrison's incredibly forced rhyme in Old Brown Shoe: "I may appear to be im-''per''-fect / My love is something you can't ''re''-ject"

* The majority of Fall Out Boy's "I Don't Care", in which they not only try to rhyme "tolerance" and "pants", but also this gem:

* Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" tries to rhyme "China" and "Alabama". Seriously.

* Aside from a touch of [[Intercourse with You]], the entire point of Robby Roadsteamer's "Banana" seems to be finding things that almost-but-not-quite rhyme with the title (such as "slammer", "Panera", "Pantera", and, somehow, "Dragon's Lair").

* [[Weezer]]'s "Everybody Get Dangerous" suffers a lot from this, but the most cringe-worthy is in the very first two lines, where "younger" is rhymed with "fun, yeah".

** "Troublemaker" is even worse:

* "Muddy Water" by Trace Adkins has the chorus:

** And what's worse is that, in the right accent, those two would be a perfect rhyme! Water and "otter" basically.

* [[Rascal Flatts]]' "Me and My Gang" rhymed "thing" with "gang", implying that they went out of their way to say "thang", something no ''real'' country singer would do no matter how thick their accent was.

* A song by the Miami Boys Choir:

* ''Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad'' by [[Meat Loaf]] has more forced rhymes than ''actual'' rhymes. A complete cataloguing would excessively lengthen this article; suffice to say, the very first quatrain rhymes "nowhere" with "inside of here" and "the way I feel" with "make me leave here".

* "Pass the Mic" by the [[Beastie Boys]], as well as [[Rhyming with Itself]] for "commercial", includes a rhyme of "on and on to the early morn", which along with "on and on to the break of dawn" is one of those rhymes that stopped being used once rap music escaped from New York.

** "Daniel" has "traveling tonight on a ''plane''" with "heading for ''Spain''", and "never ''been''" and "ever ''seen''".

* Uncle Sam's "I Don't Ever Wanna See You Again" has the following. The word "addressee" always made me cringe. I forgot until I looked it up for this trope that it didn't even rhyme.

* Autopilot Off's "Divine Intervention" has this gem:

* [[Alan Jackson]] has some painfully bad rhymes in a lot of his songs. One big example is "Where I Come From", which has such gems as "turnpike"/"midnight", "Ventura"/"finger", "dinner"/"soprano", "Kentucky"/"thunder" and "Tulsa"/"salsa".

** He also tries to rhyme "ice" and "about" in "Good Time".

* Speaking of Alan Jackson, he co-wrote Randy Travis' "Better Class of Losers", which rhymes "sweet" and "suite", a very rare example of using homophones as rhymes.

* [[Kanye West]] - "Flashing Lights" It might even work if he didn't try so hard.

** Or this bit from "American Boy"

*** Hell, a large chunk of Kanye's songs come under this trope. Which makes it all the more puzzling why so many consider him a genius...

* Another homophone rhyme: "Me and You" by Kenny Chesney rhymes "too" and "to" in the chorus.

* Ne-Yo in "So You Can Cry": "I won't attend your pity party/I'd rather go have calamari."

* [[New Kids on the Block]] - "Sexify My Love"

** I would just like to point out that somebody actually ''wrote'' this line. And decided to call the song "Sexify My Love". More like, "Rape-ify My Language"...

* One of [[Mitch Benn]]'s satirical songs on ''[[The Now Show]]'' mocks the then-Poet Laureate Andrew Motion for claiming that nothing rhymes with "Wilkinson". As with the Lehrer examples, outrageous forced rhymes are used for comic effect:

** Another one from the first series of ''Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music'':

** "Motorway Food" rhymes "ag'ny" with "lasagny".

* Ty Herndon's "In Your Face" has several: "Libra"/"Reba"/"over-eager", "rejection"/"left me", and "artist"/"party"/"sparkle".

** From the same song as above:

* The [[Steve Miller Band]]'s "Abracadabra" has quite a few awful rhymes, but the worst part has to be the chorus:

* In Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car", almost all the rhymes are slant rhymes, and Tracy works hard to make them sound like they rhyme. Well, until we get to this one, which pushes it a bit too far:

* Dead Kennedys' "California Uber Alles":

* Megadeth's Return To Hangar has this gem:

* 3OH!3's song "Don't Trust Me". It's bad enough when they try to rhyme "teeth", "need", "east", and "cheeks". "Whoa-oh" is a ''pathetic'' rhyme for "ho". But "vegetarian" does NOT rhyme with "fucking scared of him".

* The rap verses of Blondie's "Rapture" are probably ''supposed'' to seem a little silly, but:

** And yes, "sewer" ''is'' pronounced like "sore" to rhyme.

* The chorus of Thin Lizzy's "Romeo And The Lonely Girl":

* Third Day, an otherwise very talented contemporary christian band, rhymed "Leavin'" with "seasons" in the song "I Will Be True".

* [[Joni Mitchell]]'s late '60s hit "Both Sides Now" totally falls apart in the last verse by trying to rhyme "strange / changed / gained":

* R. Kelly puts a character named "Chuck" in his song [[Trapped in the Closet]] to rhyme with "{{spoiler|fuck}}" a few lines later.

* Obscure Canadian rock band Saga's "Live at Five", despite the title smelling of one, remains acceptable mostly (as is usually the case of their work), but this one's just... disturbing.

** Though, the band also tossed us a song called "Keep It Reel" on the same album as "Live at Five", so take this how you will.

* The chorus to "She's a Genius" by Jet:

* Both [[Adam Sandler]] ("The Hanukkah Song") and [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] ("Pretty Fly for a Rabbi") have rhymed "yarmulke" with "Hanukkah". ''Oy vey''.

* Along with quite a few other songs, "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles seems to run out of rhymes ending in "ay" halfway through the chorus, resulting in the most painful rhyme ever (and biggest ever cop-out) at the end: "today"!

** [[Big No|NOOOO.]]

* "Fantasy" by the Blizzards is just awful: mouth/out, seduction/catch on, fantasy/tingly, culminating in:

* "Pinch Me" by [[Barenaked Ladies]]: "There's a restaurant down the street, where hungry people like to eat."

** In this case, the painful rhyming is on purpose. "I could hide out under there, I just made you say underwear"

* Nine of the Top Ten "winners" in [http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/events/lyrical/top10.shtml the BBC's search for the worst song lyrics of all time] are cited for their painful rhymes (the remaining entry is just inane verbiage). Number one is from Des'ree's "Life":

* The chorus to [[America (band)|America]]'s "Sandman", where "man" is rhymed with "sandman", which in turn is rhymed with "abandoned".

* [[Britney Spears]] "Baby One More Time" contains three lines that sound like they rhyme, but none of them do exactly. (Though this is is arguably a subversion of the trope, because they sound fine in the song, and most people probably wouldn't even notice unless they were analysing the lyrics):-

* The Lonely Island's "Jizz in My Pants":

{{quote|''Last week, I sawr a film

* "Jesse's Girl", by Rick Springfield, is an especially egregious offender:

{{quote|''You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute

* "Black Friday Rule" by [[Flogging Molly]] has some rhymes which, though they seem odd when written down, make sense in the singer's cod Irish accent (eye/destroy, you/truth). There's no excuse for this lyric, though:

{{quote|''Well I lost me a wife, so I found me a plane''

* Lampshade hung by [[Alice Cooper]], in "School's Out":

{{quote|''Well we've got no class

* Otep manages to do this ''both ways'' in "Confrontation":

{{quote|''Riot gear, the slaves are here, piling corpses high

** and then:

{{quote|''A weak nation of need, like silent thieves in the night

** One wonders why she didn't just swap them round.

* The first few lines of [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]]' "Dani California". It's chock full of almost excruciating rhymes!

* [[Eminem]] gets in a doozy of one in the third verse of "Kill You:

{{quote|''Know why I SAY THESE THINGS?

* The chorus of "The Riverboat Song" by Ocean Colour Scene features this predictable rhyme:

{{quote|''Anyway, for all the sings you '''said''',

** This song also repeatedly rhymes "double" with "trouble".

* In the bridge of "Breaker" by Accept, the second line seems to be there only for the purpose of rhyming with the previous one and doesn't make sense in context:

** Then, there's the chorus:

* Sugarcult uses a lot of pervasive rhymes (with "Memory" being one of the worst offenders, ''abusing'' heart/start/apart to death). Still, none of those are as cringe-inducing as "Pretty Girl," which not only changes its rhyme scheme halfway through the song, but the second verse does, well, this:

** "Riot" tries a bit too hard to rhyme "riot" with "fight."

** Fairly standard pronunciation of "tortoise" in British English. Still painful though.

*** Especially since it puts the stress on TOISE instead of TOR-, where it belongs. Rhyming and scantion both weep here...

{{quote|'''Wengren:''' ''Is there a significance to "Devon, one of eleven"?''

'''Draiman:''' ''Uh-huh, big family.''

"''When I was first doing the scat version, the whole song all the way trough, almost every word of it was 'Eleven, Eleven, Eleven' 'cause not too many things rhyme with the word''". }}

** Yes, this lyric was painful because the subject had to be named "Devon" for some reason. Also note that the actual person the song was based on went unnamed.

* [[Queen]]'s "Radio Ga Ga":

{{quote|''So stick around, 'cause we might miss you

** Also from Queen, the song "Brighton Rock" has Freddie Mercury mispronouncing "compromised" and "apologize" so that can both can rhyme with "holidays".

* "Mykonos", by [[Fleet Foxes]], is a great song. But ''none'' of the lines seem to be exact rhymes, and rhymes like "us/up" and "find/night" abound.

* Lampshaded in Wu Tang Clan's "Shame On A N*** a":

{{quote|''...I'm better

* [[Ian Dury and The Blockheads|Ian Dury]] provided a painful rhyme well known in Britain in the first lines of "Billiricay Dickie" (which was probably completely intentional):

{{quote|''Had a love affair with Nina

* [[Guns N' Roses]] had a fairly bad one in ''Yesterdays'':

{{quote|''Prayers in my pocket

* Points to [[Arctic Monkeys]] in "Cornerstone" for rhyming "smoke alarm" with "broken arm".

** Arctic Monkeys are masters of the bizarre rhyme, especially in their earlier work when they leaned more heavily on Alex Turner's [[Oop North|Sheffield]] accent and did things like rhyme "problem" with "Rotherham", or, on "When The Sun Goes Down":

{{quote|''Oh, 'e must be oop to '''summat'''

** Don't forget "Fire and the Thud"

{{quote|''And does burden come to '''meetchya''' (meet you)

* [[Michael Jackson]]'s "Earth Song":

{{quote|''What about animals

** "Dirty Diana":

{{quote|''She waits at backstage doors

** "Little Susie" is a festival of poor rhymes and forced ones.

*** "Beating her voice in her ''doom''/But nobody came to her ''soon''"

*** "Oh the blood in her ''hair''.../A mystery so sullen in ''air''"

*** "The girl that now is ''dead''/So blind stare the eyes in her ''head''"

* [[ZZ Top]]'s "I'm bad, I'm Nationwide". It'd be fine if the singer just pronounced "nationwide" with a twang, like "nationwadd", even, but he pronounces it straight.

* [[The Decemberists]]' "A Cautionary Song":

** And at the end: "So be kind to your mother/ Though she may seem an awful bother". This is, however, slightly better than the bit in "Sons and Daughters" where they try to rhyme "dirigible" with "untraceable".

*** This one is particularly subjective. The offending words both end in a "bul" sound.

** They have a knack for this sort of thing... take the following example. Owch.

* It's probably intentional, as one of [[Chuck Berry]]'s trademarks is playfully stretched rhymes, but this bit of "Rock And Roll Music" still sort of stands out:

** The interesting thing is you'd sort of expect he'd drop into a southern accent for "baynd", but instead "hurricane" is pronounced "hurry can".

* Dethklok does this intentionally on "Birthday Dethday":

* Several in The Chicago Bears Shufflin' Crew's "[[Super Bowl]] Shuffle", but Jim McMahon probably has the worst:

* The Dresden Dolls' "First Orgasm" attempts to rhyme "fire drill" and "enjoyable".

* Wonderful one from the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi versus the Pink Robots, particularly to a British listener:

* Annihilator's song 'Army of One'. A song that namechecks various heavy metal bands to cite as influences includes the painfully forced rhyme:

* ''Collide'' by Howie Day comes off as this when read, but the singer makes it work. Gives a nice bit of [[Fridge Brilliance]]:

{{quote|''Even the best fall down sometimes''

''Even the wrong words ''seem to'' rhyme.'' }}

* "Down" by Jay Sean has this:

* A vintage example crops up in ''[[Porgy and Bess]]'s'' "It Ain't Necesarily So":

* Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields and other projects) is very fond of these rhymes. "I Don't Believe You" has "I had a dream and you were in it/ The blue of your eyes was in''fin''ite", but even better, from "You Must Be Out Of Your Mind":

** Another, from The Future Bible Heroes' "Hopeless":

** In [[The Magnetic Fields]]' "Zebra", "The Louvre" is rhymed with "maneuver" and "hoover", but instead of butchering the French pronunciation, the ''other'' two words are mispronounced ("manoov" and "hoov"). Which even sort of makes sense in-character, since the song is from the point of view of a pretentious and spoiled upper-class housewife. The printed lyrics take this further by using the spelling "maneuvre" and "hoovre".

* The epitome of bad rhymes can be found in a song by children's singer Joe Scruggs called "In the Freezer" that was about a snowman being kept in a freezer

{{quote|''So we asked our mom

** Which was bad enough, but towards the end, it says:

{{quote|''We watch him as he sits there

And says "It's starting to defrost." '' }}

* [[Geto Boys]]' "Mind Playing Tricks On Me"

** The "w" in "sword" is pronounced.

* Darren Hanlon, in "(There's Not Enough Songs About) Squash"

* [[Usher]]'s "Oh My Gosh". It's bad enough that he is desperate enough to rhyme 'pow pow pow' with 'wow oh wow', but then he rhymes those with 'style' and 'out'. 'Out'? Okay, slant rhyme. But 'style' is simply unforgivable.

** [[Todd in the Shadows|And that's not all that's horribly wrong with that song...]]

* [[Black Sabbath]]'s "War Pigs" kicks off with the immortal line

{{quote|''Generals gather in their masses

** And in "Iron Man":

{{quote|''Nobody wants him

** Admittedly, Ozzy's enunciation of "unfold" sort of makes it less noticeable.

*** It could be taken as "unfurl", which at least sounds better.

** No mention of this line?

{{quote|''Nobody wants him

* "Fennario", a folk song about an army captain who falls "in love with a lady like a dove" sticks "-o" at the end of lines to make them scan right:

{{quote|''If ever I return, pretty Peggy-o,

** Lampshaded by [[Bob Dylan]] in his recording of the song.

{{quote|''I've been around this whole country, but I never yet found "Fennario".''}}

* "Harry Rag" by [[The Kinks]] describes a young man's fondness for cigarettes thusly:

{{quote|''But when he gets in a bit of a jam,

* "Whatta Man" by Salt-n-Pepa (and En Vogue):

** How awful were the protagonist's previous partners if they couldn't even get her name right?

* Anything by Rapper Juelz Santana, hell he could probably be the [[Trope Codifier]]

{{quote|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}-Jy4jv5PSa4 If you're masochistic enough, listen for yourself.]}}

* [[Kraftwerk]], already not generally known for their lyrical prowess, came up with this gem in their song "Sex Object"

* Live's "Simple Creed" has a couple: "Now nobody's takin' your candy /you just keep on livin' this tragedy" and "Now nobody's takin' your bicycle/ maybe somebody should take your microphone".

* [[The Ramones]] rhyme 'massacre' with 'me' in "Chain Saw."

* [[Amy Winehouse]] rhymes 'players', 'say' and 'millionaire' in "Fuck Me Pumps", with millionaire pronounced 'millio-naya' to fit:

{{quote|''You don't like players

* [[Cobra Starship]] fails to realise that rhyming "Seven" with "Seven" is REALLY ANNOYING.

* Marillion's "Emerald Lies" actually ''ends'' with:

** This is simultaneously excruciating and wonderful, as the listener realizes that this may be the only song in history not only to end with the word "linoleum", but also to "rhyme" it with "kimono." And to top it off, it does it with a melodramatic, Wagnerian cadence.

* Angelspit's song ''Juicy'' has a rather painful example in the first two lines. "Spin a dice and it's Vegas rigged/A glass full of conobine, you're off your head." The way he sings it, it does work... kinda.

* From Peter Cetera and Amy Grant's "Next Time I Fall In Love":

** Granted it ''does'' rhyme, it just also makes it sound as though it got recorded before the lyrics were even finished. What really sells is that most of it is vocal filler until they get to the inevitable "The next time I fall in love, it will be with you."

* In "That Song", Canadian rock band Big Wreck feature a ''really'' awful usage when they change the pronounciation of "dumb" to rhyme with "room". Seriously, could no other word have been used there?

''So just leave the room'' }}

* Three Days Grace's "Break". Technically, the line in question '''does''' rhyme, but still...

* Roger Miller pulls one in "Dang Me" which is totally forgiven for humor value:

* Wckr Spgt's version of Andy Kim's "Rock Me Gently", where [[Rule of Funny|for some reason]] all of the original verses get replaced with deliberately bad rhymes that revolve around emphasizing the "-ed" part of past tense verbs:

* "One Tribe" by The Black Eyed Peas tried to rhyme "amnesia" with "evil". Seriously...

* [[ACDC]] may be a fantastic band, but this rhyme from "First Blood" felt a little forced...

{{quote|''Some like it hot

* Johnny Mercer's version of "Glow Worm" includes this howler:

* Lyricist Sammy Cahn gave us several classics, including "Let It Snow", "High Hopes", "Call Me Irresponsible"... and this:

{{quote|''How lucky can one guy be?

* [[Todd in the Shadows]] said that the first verse of Flo Rida's "Club Can't Handle Me" features "the worst succession of non-rhymes I've heard since the second verse of [[Steve Miller]]'s 'Take the Money and Run'":

* Tarja Turunen, in her post-[[Nightwish]] song "Underneath", pronounces "worry" to rhyme with "sorry".

** Wouldn't that work if you were Canadian?

** Since most of the country doesn't have a strong accent, no it wouldn't.

* War's "Why Can't We Be Friends" pulls this off a couple times: in the next-to-last verse, they rhyme "bright" with "about", while in the final verse, they rhyme "CIA" with "mafia". Yes, pronounced "maf-eye-ay".

* Rod Stewart's "Maggie Mae" has the lines:

** Perfectly fine rhyme, but look at the tortured syntax in that second line.

* 1980s ska band Madness used [[Refuge in Audacity]] and cockney accents to more or less get away with

* The Cranberries gave us

* From Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts":

* "It's Raining Again" by Supertramp opens with an "End/Friend/Mend" sequence, but that's just setting the scene for "C'mon, you little fighter/No need to get uptighter". According to ''[[The Now Show]] Book of World Records'' entry for Worst Rhyming Couplet In Pop, "after writing this, they probably high-fived and went to the pub. What they should have done is enrolled in a remedial songwriting course at their local techical college."

* The winner of the book's Worst Rhyming Couplet record is Snap! for the jaw-dropping combination of painful rhyme and tasteless hyperbole that is:

* Interpol in their song "Obstacle 1" has a very jarring two lines that for some can completely ruin the song because of how shoehorned it sounds:

* The Kelly Family's "Fell In Love with an Alien" tries to rhyme "Romeo" with "homey boy".

* Lee Ann Womack's "Buckaroo" contains this couplet, which requires truly heroic amounts of country twang to pull off. She gives it a fair try.

''Who knows the difference 'tween love and lusTING.'' }}

* [[Kid Rock]]'s "All Summer Long" contains many of these, the most painful of which being:

* Fort Minor's "Remember The Name" is bad about this: Almost every pair of words that seem to be intended to rhyme don't normally, though words get mumbled to accommodate on occasion. Alone/know him is an offender.

* "Check It Out" from will.i.am of [[Black Eyed Peas]] fame and Nicki Minaj is full of particularly forced rap rhymes (e.g. interest, nemesis, emphasis, and "simple bitch"), but this one really stood out for how hard will.i.am had to struggle to make it sound like it rhymed:

* In "Firework", Katy Perry tries to rhyme "aah" and "sky":

{{quote|''Make 'em go aah, aah, aah

** And in her "TGIF", ''none'' of the rhyming triplets in the chorus actually rhyme. Choice examples include attempting to rhyme "bars" with "boulevard" and "dark" with "menage-a-trois."

* Stereophonics' "I Could Lose Ya" is full of lines that don't really rhyme, although to be fair many of them are facilitated by Kelly Jones' natural accent. The first verse rhymes "theater" with "pier" and "shoulder" with "jumper", and later there's:

* "Break Down Here" by Julie Roberts has this is the chorus.

* [[The Black Keys]]' side project Blakroc has the single "Ain't Nothing Like You", which attempts to ryhme "of" with "been": "I been accused uh/The same thing that you buh"

* "Fuck You" by Cee Lo Green rhymes "sorry" with "Ferrari" and "Atari":

* World Party's songs tend to combine [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]] with [[Shown Their Work]], which makes this line from "Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb" stand out even more:

* The chorus of Belle & Sebastian's "Funny Little Frog" attempts to rhyme "court" and "throat" with "poet". The strange thing is that "throat" is stretched to two syllables but "court" isn't:

* [[Microdisney]]'s "A Friend with a Big Mouth" contains a serious case of assonance with its attempt to rhyme 'sing' and 'hill': "When you turn to kiss her, birds begin to sing, louder and louder, they're rolling down the hill". This might have been invoked intentionally given that the listener often expects the last line to be "They drown out everything".

* [[Bruno Mars]]' "The Lazy Song":

* The Irish folksong "I Am a Rambling Irishman" contains this verse:

(At least one singer pronounced it "Philadelphee"; I'm not sure if that's better or worse.)

 

 

* Sing it, ''[[Fallout]] 3'' fans: "They have things like the atom '''bomb'''... so I think I'll stay where I '''om'''...civilizatiooooonnnnn, I'll stay right heeeerrreee!!!"

** Another thing that she seems to have some kind of issue with is meter. [[Dissidia Final Fantasy|To wit:]]

{{quote|'''Shantotto:''' I don't make threats!

If there's no result by the time I'm done researching the ultimate spell, it's too late for regrets! }}

* In the search-and-find game ''Penny Dreadfuls: Sweeney Todd'' many of the songs in the cut scenes tend to fall victim to this. Nice melodies, sure; okay singing, sure; smooth lyrics...eh. It's hard not to cringe at lines like "Joanna, I felt you watching over me / As I fought the perils of the sea / And almost drowned in my own misery".

 

* In [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1505 this] ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'', T-Rex tries to rap but his rhymes turn out painfully terrible.

** Rhyming "live-action movie" with "David Duchovny"???

** Yes, but they're ''filk songs''. (And sometimes they're better than the originals.)

* ''[[Least I Could Do]]'': Rayne often does [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20060503 "beat" poetry] at the local coffeehouse. Also, [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20060914 this strip.]

* During a ''[[Keiki]]'' story in which the title character is officially proclaimed the smartest persion in [[Hawaii]], Beefer challenges her to come up with a rhyme for "[[Least Rhymable Word|orange]]." She answers, "The rock guy screamed, 'more grunge!' as he ate an or-ange."

* ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'' features Penny rhyming to Karen that "Boys don't make passes/at girls that wear glasses// But boys think it's ''way sick''/when girls get ''Lasik''."

* [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2261#comic There was once a man from a ruggery.] He engaged in consensual heterosexual sex that was well within the confines of acceptable marital bedroom conduct... '''ery.'''

 

 

* The ''[[Stargate Infinity]]'' theme song does not contain a ''single'' true rhyme:

** "I can do the hully gully...I can imitate Vin Scully!" (Gabbo, "Krusty Gets Kancelled")

** "I hate every ape I see...from chimpan-a to chimpan-zee..." (Troy McClure, "A Fish Called Selma")

** "Well, Scooby Doo can DOO DOO, but Jimmy Carter is smarter!"

** and...

* ''[[The Swan Princess]]'' gave us this deathless couplet from its [[Villain Song]], "No More Mr. Nice Guy": "Up 'til now I've pulled my punches/I intend to eat their lunches..."

** As well as "As soon as my witchcraft has zinged 'em/I'll gain control of the kingdom."

* [[Transformers]]' Wheelie speaks in rhymes that are not groovy, and has been doing so since ''[[Transformers: The Movie]]'' [the 1985 one]. It is never explained why he talks in rhyme, but it makes watching scenes where he appears a painful time.

** Your rhyming in that example is badly forced, your poetry work needs to be outsourced. To be honest, I'd wish you luck, but I really just can't give a [[Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion|damn.]]

* ''[[Titanic: The Legend Goes On]]'' had one with Mexican mice. Just about ''every rhyme'' is just a random word with "-sto" tacked on the end to rhyme with "gusto."

*** Especially good as it first makes you think the word is going to be "hurled."

** Plus "He won't bite Beast or Man / 'Cause he's a [[AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle|ve-ge-ta-ri-AN]] ..."

* From ''[[The Marvel Superheroes]]'':

** The ''[[Incredible Hulk]]'' cartoon attempted to rhyme "gamma rays" with "unglamorous".

* This line from ''True Love's Kiss'' in ''[[Enchanted]]''. I mean, it could be intentional, but ''Jesus'':

** Of ''course'' it's intentional, the movie's [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshading]] [[Fridge Brilliance|the fact that]] [[No Sex Allowed|there's never more than a kiss]] in Disney movies!

* Not a song, but the Wilderness Explorer motto from ''[[Up (animation)|Up]]'':

'''Russell:''' Yes it does! }}

** The song "Spirit of Adventure" from all the way at the end of the credits has gloriously cheesy rhymes- but then, what else do you expect from a song that rhymes the word ''adventure'' three seperate times?

* The title theme of ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' rhymes "world" with "unfurled". Not great, but not ''so'' bad just yet, especially since the easier-to-rhyme "Earth" is used elsewhere in the song. The ''really'' painful part of this is just how much the writers apparently ''love'' that rhyme, and ''constantly'' use it in other songs on the show (it's ''always'' "unfurled"; never any other word). Okay, so "world" isn't the most rhymable word, and yes, it's the final word of Brain's [[Catch Phrase]], but does it need to be rhymed every time the heroes sing?

* Two in the song "Macadamia Nut" from ''[[Animaniacs]]''.

** and

* ''[[Bravestarr]]'' has a bad one when describing the title character's arrival and powers

* ''[[Toxic Crusaders]]'', the animated adaption of ''The Toxic Avenger'', has this gem of a description.

 

** Now here's the ''House of Mouse'' version for comparison:

** The song would've avoided this problem were if there was a music video set in the titular House of Mouse's Prop Room (especially the fact that the melody of the third verse mentioned above sound an awful lot like [[Atlantis: The Lost Empire|"The Crystal Chamber"]].)

** Another ''House of Mouse'' example would be the show's version of the song "You Can Fly" from ''[[Peter Pan (Disney film)|Peter Pan]]'', where one of the song's lyrics apparantly pronunced the word "aerodynamic" in a way so it rhymes with "beak."

Your worst dream, that's my '''idea''' of fun!" }}

** [[Fridge Brilliance|Well, it's ''Ruber'']].

** Also in "Over a Barrel". Pinkie Pie's song hasn't one rhyme in it that isn't at least a little silly.

** Pinkie's cupcake song in "Call of the Cutie" really takes the cake.

** The song "At the Gala" rhymes the words "time" and "divine" near the end.

* The "Come Home Perry" song from the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "Oh, There You Are, Perry" has deliberately cringeworthy rhymes when Candace has trouble coming up with rhymes for "Perry":

...

'''Phineas:''' Larry?!

{{quote|'''Baljeet:''' You are pluralising "at"?

'''Buford:''' Work with me, brain-boy! }}

** This became more painful after [[Disney XD]] cut out all of the theme song except the last two lines, and the part where the singers exclaim, "[[Avengers Assemble]]!", in order to make room for recaps and expository voiceovers.

{{quote|'''Fillmore:''' You just rhymed "bomb" with "wisdom"!}}

 

== Real Life ==

* E. Y. Harburg's lyrics yield nothing to [[Ogden Nash]] in mangling words for the sake of rhyme.

** His rhymes weren't as painful because they were ''meant'' to be funny. Many other examples on this page weren't, thus increasing their painfulness.

* Rev. Joseph Lowery's invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration included a a few rhyming lines that were a reference to the 1940s song "Black, Brown and White":

{{quote|We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back

When the red man can get ahead, man

And when white will embrace what is right. }}

* The Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas deserves a special mention here: Sinterklaas gifts are traditionally accompanied by poems of.. let's say... [[Flame Bait|varying quality.]]

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Poetry Tropes]]

[[Category:YMMV Trope]]

[[Category:Music Tropes]]