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Imperfect Rhyme: The Perfect Solution

Ah, there you are - you’ve just written the most amazing riff, using the most surprising chord structure, and sung a vocal melody that would make angels weep. Now, if only you can find that perfect lyric then you will have finally written the PERFECT SONG. Let’s see…this is all about that heartbreaking love affair you had last June. What rhymes with June?? I know, MOON!! There. That was it. That was the moment you lost everybody’s interest. It’s gonna be hard to play your next gig over the sound of the entire audience snoring so damn loud. Don’t buy bigger amps, don’t get some Björk-style Tesla coils that will zap sleepy fans into submission (tempting as that may be). The solution is blessedly simple, you don’t have to use perfect rhyme.

Abandon Reliance on Perfect Rhyme, All Ye Who Enter Here

Rhyming is part and parcel to songwriting. Rhymes make your lyrics more memorable, they allow the lines to connect, they can impart a flow to the words – they bring a sort of musicality even in the absence of music. But cliche rhymes will cause that flow to bleed out – they wear on the listener’s attention span until it trickles away. There’s only so many predictable couplets an ear can withstand before the brain simply tunes it out as so much noise. Moon/June, rain/pain, miss/kiss, hand/understand…zzzzzz. Worse, as a writer you can fall into a trap before the song’s even finished by allowing the meaning and direction of the lyric to be dictated to you:“But, these are the only words that rhyme! I had to write it like this, I’m sorry!” You should be sorry, hypothetical songwriter. You should be.

Ok, we’re gonna talk a bit about the nuts and bolts of language now, but hang in there it’s worth it. Just get a little phonetic knowledge under your belt and you’ll never be short of options when writing again. When we talk rhymes, 99% of people think of perfect rhymes. We all know it when we hear it: sound/round, here/beer, June/moon. In short, perfect rhyme occurs when the final vowel+consonant combination between two words is identical. The vast majority of cliche rhyme crimes are committed because of the desperate search for these perfect rhymes. Now I’m not saying all perfect rhymes are cliche or that you should never use perfect rhyme, but once you abandon reliance on it and learn how to look for more unexpected rhymes, your verbal palate will expand exponentially and your songwriting prowess will level up. Then the next time you finish a song you might think: “No that isn’t a perfect rhyme, but yes that is closer to the actual meaning of the song I set out to write and hey whaddaya know it’s actually something I’ve never heard before, isn’t that clever? Won’t all the people love me now I’ve written something truly original? End Scene”

 Be Friends With Family

There are several different ways to find a thoroughly satisfying imperfect rhyme, but for the moment we’re going to stick with what’s known as Family Rhyme. Family rhyme is a type of imperfect rhyme that occurs when two words have the same final vowel sound but only a similar sounding consonant.

Family rhyme relies on using sounds that are closely related to one another phonetically. Essentially, it’s as close as you can get to perfect rhyme without technically being perfect. And now, time for a visual aid:

(Note: This chart shows the sounds of consonants in English but in no way reflects how these sounds are actually spelled. For example, the sound of the g in fragile is represented on this chart by the letter j – because English is a language with a long and complex history and often the spelling makes zero phonetic sense. Don’t think so? Here are some other words with the letter g: rouge, bulge, hug, rough. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Oh, add “thought” to that list too.)

This little chart groups consonants in the English language by the way in which the sounds are made and what mouth/tongue position is used to make each sound.

The different columns reflect the 3 different ways these consonant sounds are made – either by allowing for a build-up and release of air (plosives – explosives!), by restricting air as it passes through the mouth (fricatives – think friction), or by resonating the nasal cavity to form the sound (nasals – mmmawp?). Sounds that are formed the same way are called companions.

The top row of voiced consonants are formed when the vocal chords are engaged, the unvoiced consonants are formed without using the vocal chords.

To demonstrate the difference, take a deep breath and breathe out slowly. Now being sure to keep your mouth in the same position, alternate saying “Uhhhhh” while you exhale with saying nothing at all (“Errrr” if you’re British. See, arbitrary spelling!). That’s you engaging your vocal chords. Now try saying “Duh-duh-duh-duh” and then say nothing at all while continuing the same mouth/tongue motions. The “duh-duh” sound is the voiced plosive “d”, the “t-t-“ sound you get from disengaging the vocal chords is its partner “t”. Yeah, you guessed it. Voiced/unvoiced sounds that appear directly opposite each other in the chart (partners) are made using the same mouth/tongue position.

The completionist in me wants to give an example for each sound. Left to right starting with the voiced row: rob, rod, gig – sieve, budge (j), baThe, forces (z), deluge (zh) – seem, seen, sing. Unvoiced: tip, pit, pick – sniff, hatch, bath, trips, splash.

And Then…?

So, how does all this newly found linguistic knowledge help get you out of the rut of relying too much on perfect rhyme? Well, if you can’t find a non-cliche perfect rhyme or need a word that more closely conveys the meaning of the lyric as you envision it, start by searching for a word that has a partner sound to the one you want to rhyme. And, like in life, if you can’t find a decent partner, you should at least be able to find a decent companion. Companion rhymes can be just as good.

Hypothetical Songwriter Finds a Hypothetical Rhyme

Let’s look at an example of this approach in action by coming up with some alternatives for the second line in this couplet (Copyright 2016, by me. I would’ve used an actual famous human’s lyrics, but that would’ve cost money so…womp-womp)

           You say my ambition isn’t serious enough

           You call it a flaw [when I laugh at stuff] Ok, so we’re gonna wanna to fix the obvious placeholder “at stuff” here. Enough/stuff is a perfect rhyme, it’s just a terrible line. We’ll start by listing perfect rhyme options. The sentiment of the lyric is dealing with an overbearing or overly-critical lover. Perfect rhymes for “enough” include:

bluff      cuff       huff       scruff     buff       fluff       puff       snuff chuff     gruff      rough    tough

Hmm, nothing great there.

You call it a flaw when I call your bluff – could work, but there’s no context in the rest of they lyric. What bluff? What are you talking about?

You call it a flaw when I dress too rough. Meh, that’s ok, but it’s a superficial criticism and doesn’t cut as deep as the line could. And it’s a bit awkward.

You call it a flaw, and that’s just rough. Another indifferent solution – just doubling down on the meaning of the previous line without adding any interesting nuance. Also by changing the subject of the criticism, it detracts from the momentum of this section.

You call it a flaw when I’m not tough. Ok, that does work. It’s a bit simplistic, but let’s see how the rest of the section develops.

Right, time to move on to the partner. If we look back at the chart we can see the consonant directly opposite the final f sound in our word enough is the voiced fricative v. So we’re looking for words with the same vowel sound as enough, but ending in v.

above   dove     glove    love      shove

Not a lot going on here either.

You call it a flaw when I fall in love. Hey, good line – makes zero sense in this context though.

You call it a flaw when I’m a dove. Ok, makes sense, but a bit out of place. Someone is usually called a “dove” for their political beliefs.

That’s about it there, how about companions? Always start with the nearest companion/s and expand out from there – the further away you get from the original sound, the more imperfect the rhyme becomes. First up, ch:

clutch   crutch   much    such     touch

Better options here.

You call it a flaw when I use a crutch. Ouch! In the literal sense of someone actually having the gall to criticize you for needing a crutch to walk, that’s pretty good. However a “crutch” can also be a metaphorical one – like maybe, alcohol. So, yeah that could be a flaw indeed. Too vague.

You call it a flaw when I laugh too much. Good. And the closest one yet to the meaning of the original line.

You call it a flaw when I need your touch. Yeah, also an overly harsh criticism so it works in that sense. But “need your touch” is a cliche phrase, and this exercise is all about avoiding cliches so…Next!

Next companion, th:

doth (American accent only…)

Yeahhh, moving on – s:

bus, cuss, discuss, fuss, impetus, plus, radius, stimulus, us, adventurous, ambiguous, analogous, anonymous, arduous, assiduous, blasphemous, boisterous, cancerous, chivalrous, courteous, curious, dangerous, delirious, dubious, envious, fabulous, furious, glorious, hilarious, humorous…

There are actually hundreds of words that could possibly fit here – seriously, give it a moment and you’ll realize these are just a few examples. So very quickly we’ve gone from 12 not-so-great perfect rhymes to literally hundreds of imperfect rhymes with varying degrees of meaning and subtlety, and weeding out the obvious duds still leaves us with dozens of directions the lyric could go. It’s much easier to find a needle in a stack of needles. Our job now is simply sifting through the options to find which needle works best.

I’ve settled on either:

           You call it a flaw when I laugh too much

or:

           You call it a flaw when I’m hilarious

Now to try the two in the context of the whole bar:

You say my ambition isn’t serious enough You call it a flaw when I laugh too much You tell me I’m week, ‘cause you’ve seen me cry And I never lay the law down for you to comply

vs

You say my ambition isn’t serious enough You call it a flaw when I’m hilarious You tell me I’m week, ‘cause you’ve seen me cry And I never lay the law down for you to comply

Difficult to say. Although I love the self-deprecating humor of when I’m hilarious, the fact that it produces the internal rhyme with serious almost makes it flow too well. It’s gonna be another 4 lines before the listener gets a true end-line perfect rhyme, and when I laugh too much makes that payoff bigger by more effectively delaying gratification, and it still manages to flow.

Decisions! And this is just the first batch of words with potential, there are still more to try – we haven’t considered ­sh or any of the companions voiced counterparts yet. Hopefully this example proves the point – with just a little applied phonetic knowledge, there is no shortage of options.

Loose Ends

Moving on from the example above, let’s quickly address why L and R sounds are missing from this whole discussion. Well, L and R stand a bit apart from the rest of the English consonants, phonetically speaking. In fact the only close relationship they have is to each other so the options when trying to find a suitable rhyme can be limited. If you’re having trouble, rewriting the line by ending with a different word might be best.

And lastly, rhyming vowels. The good news: words that end in vowel sounds usually have no shortage of potential perfect rhymes. I, she, you, they – we could go on all day. The bad news is: that’s all you get! There’s no such thing as an imperfect rhyme for an isolated vowel sound.

Tools

To truly get the best results from this method, you’re gonna need a grown-up rhyming dictionary. I know what you’re thinking: “But, aren’t there websites that do this for me? Why do I have to think about it?” Well for starters, there are no websites out there that cover everything, especially the more complex compound rhymes. And really the most thorough solution is to use both, of course.

By ‘grown-up’ rhyming dictionary I do NOT mean a simple, most often worn out, list of perfect rhymes. You need one where the words are organized by sound – in other words, phonetically. I whole-heartedly recommend The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, edited by Clement Wood. You should note, though, that this is an American dictionary and therefore everything is grouped according to that accent. Fear not! Many if not most modern singers tend to mimic a flat Midwestern American accent when they sing anyway (yes they do, it’s fine, it’s just a style and there’s historical context to consider), but even if you’re in the outside set that sticks to their regional guns, this book is arranged by sound. Your rhymes will still be in there. And be sure to read the introductory material, it’s worth taking time to familiarize yourself with how the book works. Good luck!