bad rhymes

Posted on March 9th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Lists, Badness.

The Wombat File is asking for everyone's worst song couplets of all time. Help out this worthy cause.

I would also like to collect here rhymes that are forbidden until further notice. At the top of my list is "use/abuse". Any word where you have a good shot at guessing the rhyme word before the next line starts is a possible contender. Hall of fame entry: "museum/see 'em".

15 comments.

Jordan

Comment on March 9th, 2007.

"Fire/pyre" has always gotten on my nerves. The most prominent use of that is in that Doors song, but I know I've heard it from other bands as well.

Adam

Comment on March 9th, 2007.

Magic/Tragic
Hero/Zero

please, let no one ever use these again.

Ashmoe

Comment on March 9th, 2007.

Baby/Maybe

It's in far too many songs already.

Scraps

Comment on March 9th, 2007.

Those are all good. I think magic/tragic probably makes my top ten.

Robert Legault

Comment on March 9th, 2007.

The absolute worst couplet I can think of is this textbook example of bathos from the immortal pen of Sonny Bono:

And men still keep on marching off to war
Electrically they keep a baseball score

Scraps

Comment on March 9th, 2007.

Cheesus, that's worse than Barry McGuire.

ethan

Comment on March 10th, 2007.

I...actually really like that line from The Beat Goes On.

I don't remember any of it right now, but a friend of mine bought an album by Scott Baio (really) at a yard sale once, and when we listened to it we sang along with every song, with the right melody and lyrics, after hearing just the first line of each one. I mean, that one was the worst cover of Midnight Confessions ever helped, but even the "original" songs were so predictable that we knew them all already. Don't remember the specific rhymes, though.

Robert Legault

Comment on March 10th, 2007.

By Barry McGuire, I assume you mean "Eve of Destruction" ("You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'/And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin'"). But I cut P.F. Sloan (frequently with Steve Barri) a lot more slack, because of the wide variety of songs they managed to write: surf/hot rod ("Anywhere the Girls Are," "Summer Means Fun"). straight-ahead pop ("You Baby"), fairly hard rock ("Secret Agent Man"), and folk/protest ("EoD," Where Were You When I Needed You"), and so much more. Where's the P.F. Sloan tribute CD?

Scraps

Comment on March 11th, 2007.

Well, Sloan got a fine song written in tribute to him -- by similarly sometimes-great sometimes-awful Jimmy Webb -- which is better than a tribute album, I think.

cleek

Comment on March 14th, 2007.

“museum/see 'em”

is that for Big Yellow Taxi, or the Adams Family theme?

any use of 'fire/desire' is a full letter-grade off, in my book. same for any song that rhymes a word with itself (or a homophone): generals gathered in their masses / just like witches at black masses.

ethan

Comment on March 14th, 2007.

Aw, I like it when words rhyme with themselves, if it's clever. That Black Sabbath line is clever to me. So is the White Stripes song that rhymes "something in it" with "nothing in it."

Scraps

Comment on March 14th, 2007.

Slapp Happy's "Michelangelo" also uses museum/see 'em, and I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting another.

ethan

Comment on March 17th, 2007.

Dunno if anyone's still reading this, but it just came to me that the Dead Milkmen's "Air Crash Museum" rhymes museum with see 'em, except it's really funny.

Scraps

Comment on March 18th, 2007.

I'm reading! I didn't know that. I confess I've never heard a Dead Milkmen song I thought was funny, though.

ethan

Comment on March 18th, 2007.

Hmph.

Leave a comment

Comments can contain some xhtml. Names and emails are appreciated but not required (emails aren't displayed).

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-Spam Image