Lyrical Shoehorn: Difference between revisions

So you're listening to a new song, and really like it! Not only is the melody awesome, but the lyrics seem really deep and poignant. [[Mondegreen|But is he talking about shoes there?]] You're not sure, so you go to the Internet, pull up a lyrics site, and look up to the words to the song.

And they end up looking something like this:

{{quote|[[The Neverhood|I put 'em in my hat, I eat it just like that,]]<br />

[[The Neverhood|I put 'em in my ears and in my shoes,]]<br />

[[The Neverhood|I put 'em in my pants, do a little dance,]]<br />

While song lyrics are a form of poetry, there's one simple fact about songs that sets them apart from poems: ''They're meant to be sung.'' So lines that make no sense on paper--suchpaper—such as run-on or fragmented sentences, [[Painful Rhyme|strange contrivances of grammar]], and [[Word Salad Lyrics|outright nonsense]]--are—are not only accepted in songs, but they can actually make them ''better'', since it flows better with the music. Whether the words are written to fit the music, or the music written after the words are down, a song and its lyrics have to fit together--andtogether—and if the words have to be "squeezed" a little to make them fit, well, that might just happen.

** Or much of [[Talking Heads]]' output during his time as their producer. As a matter of fact, "I Zimbra" is based on an ''actual'' sound-poem, specifically one by [[Dada|Dadaist]]ist Hugo Ball.

* Bono's infamous [[Gratuitous Spanish|Spanish counting]] at the beginning of [[U2]]'s "Vertigo:" "Unos! Dos! Tres! Catorce!" That's "Some! Two! Three! Fourteen!" for the non-fluent among you.

* Who could forget the memetic part of Ievan Polkka as performed by Loituma? Traditionally, that part is ad-libbed in random, interesting-sounding scatting.

* [[Memetic Mutation|Soulja Boy.]]

** My Chemical Romance actually named a song "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)". Its chorus is three lines of 16 "na"s each.

* In Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs Dave calls out "Baby I'm-a Want You" by Bread. "Baby, I'm-a too lazy to write lyrics that scan, so I'm-a just add an extra 'a' whenever I'm-a need a syllable."

* Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah": "Even more in love with me you'd fall", clearly phrased in that borderline nonsensical manner to both fit the meter and rhyme with "all".

* From early in ''Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of [[The War of the Worlds]]'':<br /><small>"(novel)|The chancesWar of anything coming from Mars</small><br /><small>Are a million to one," he said.</small><br />(In the original novel, itWorlds]]'s "The chances ''against'' anything..."):

* Harry Chapin's hit- "Cat's in the Cradle": "It's been sure nice talking to you."

** Of course, given the parodic nature of the [[Anti-Love Song]] as a whole, and given the illicit nature of Lancelot and Guinevere's affair...

** The line is the subject of a [[Douglas Adams]] essay, as he uses it as an example of "Unfinished Business of the 20th Century", things that really should be sorted out before the digits change. He even tries to repair it himself before conceding that perhaps it's not as easy a problem as it first appears.

* The [[Gorillaz]] song ''Rock It'' consists mostly of the word "blah." People have variously interpreted this as incredibly deep or incredibly lazy. It might be Word of God, or just a commonly accepted interpretation that it's about rock stars who pump out a few good albums and then start cranking out lazy shit (hence: "I'm walking to the something, blah blah blah blah blah", among other lines).

** No, you can still notice. And it's painful. The song "Photograph" is particularly grating.

* Endemic in [[Starflyer 59]]'s music. Jason Martin always writes the music first and the lyrics last, and he admits to padding songs with lyrics that sound good and mean nothing--andnothing—and for the fans, it's usually impossible to tell the difference.

* The Killers' "Human": In order to rhyme with "answer," the [[Egregious|egregiouslyegregious]]ly grammatically incorrect "Are we human or are we dancer?" was made the focal point of the chorus.

** There are times when such nouns are treated as adjectives (if you were asking about a group's nationality, both "Are they German?" and "Are they Germans?" would be accepted), so the lyrics are only asking us to start considering 'dancer' to be a biological classification mutually exclusive with 'human'.

* [[Carrie Underwood]]'s "Undo It" has a couple, most notably "you stole my happy" (which one reviewer said made the song sound like she was singing in [[LOLcats|LOLcat speak]]) and "uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-undo it."

* Canadian band Big Wreck may have the worst example of all with ''"That Song"''- they ''changed the pronounciation of a word'' to make it fit better into the song! "Dumb" becomes ''"doom"'', simply so that it will rhyme with "room". Seriously, could no other word have been used there?:

Sor-ry I ca-[[AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle|NOT]] hear you, I'm kin-da bu-sy.<br />

...<br />

Just a sec-ond, it's my fav-rite song they gon-na play<br />

''When you're drivin' me, ooh, [[Painful Rhyme|crazy]]''<br />

* [[Bob Dylan]] does this a lot, most famously adding the word "babe" at the end of lines. Other examples from his early work: "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (rhyming "knowed" with "road"); "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" ("there's beauty in the sunrise in the sky"--where—where else would the sunrise be?)

** "If it works, why not?" is perhaps the closest Bob has to a philosophy. Consider--inConsider—in these stanzas from "Motorpsycho Nitemare"--the—the elegant division of lines:

* Pretty much the second half of [[Alan Jackson]]'s "Where I Come From". Besides having [[Painful Rhyme|Painful Rhymes]]s out the wazoo, it tries to pass off "use my finger" as a synonym for hitchhiking, and… well, it's anyone guess what the second half is trying to even say:

* Edwin McCain's "I'll Be" has "I'll be your crying shoulder". It's not grammatically incorrect or anything, but it sounds a little odd because no one really phrases "a shoulder to cry on" that way.

* [[Ed Sheeran]]'s "The A-Team" (a song about a woman addicted to drugs) has some seriously [[Painful Rhyme|Painful Rhymes]]s because of this:

* The chorus of [[REM]]'s "Leaving New York" has the grammatically odd line "leaving was never my proud" (probably meaning "pride", but that wouldn't slant-rhyme with "around" and "down"). Like the Carrie Underwood example, it can be read as being in [[Lolcat]] speak.

[[Category:Lyrical Shoehorn{{PAGENAME}}]]