Meaning versus rhymes

I suggest you have plenty of things to say and keep close to the sounds. I hope I am full of good advice.

Below is advice on how to strike the right balance between sounding enough like the original words and telling an intelligible story. I also have advice for anything written in rhyme.

There are more important things than rhyming

Sue! Do not poo in that loo at the zoo!

What, it matters to you exactly what I do in it? If it is out of order. . .

A few kangaroos flew out of Exhibit Two and threw blue goo in the loo, saying Woo hoo hoo! One of them let out a coo and a moo, too!

Boo! None of this is true! Who would come up with such nonsense?

There are certainly times when you have to do what you have to do. A good example is the song title Attitude. There is exactly one word that rhymes with that, gratitude. So, that was what I went with.

Then I had to figure it out from there. What would pirates be grateful for? The answer was freedom.

Ultimately, that of course worked out. Basing things around rhymes can work pretty well, as any number of books for children prove. It is fine to have two yellow fellows, one who bellows Hello! while the other plays mellow music on a cello.

Personally, though, I would stop there. Take it too far, and it can get pretty nonsensical and even unpleasant, throwing words together just because they rhyme. You are not going to have a very impressed audience if you write something like:

I led Ted, to whom I am wed, to bring Fred bread Fred wanted to be fed in bed, and Ted instead said, Fred, why is your bed red? Then Ted fled and said, Fred is dead! His head bled from the lead!

Not only is that a horrible story no one (at least nobody like me) wants to read, but it is unrealistic, with too many coincidences of words whose endings sound the same fitting the situation.

Parodies must consider when to come up with rhymes

Obviously, you will be coming up with rhymes for many of the individual words. But not all of them. Not always even the words with the most prominent meaning. The point of a parody is to do something funny with the song, not to change everything. For an example of less than constructive rhyming, refer to the section headed Why did you bother to change father? on this page.

If you do rhyme, allow some wiggle room

You have seen lean, clean, mean teens in jeans who like to look at scenes on screens or in magazines and preen and are too keen on green beans and you want to wean them off before eating green beans like queens affects their spleens? I do not know that to be an actual health concern. I mean, green beans are supposed to be good for you, are they not? Personally, the university dean would worry about eating too much cream - which is a close enough rhyme, by the way.

Regardless of whether you are writing an original song or a parody, I suggest that one, you figure out what you are singing about before you worry about rhymes, and second, that you do not worry about rhyming exactly. When picking songs, you will notice that inexact rhymes (e.g. Thought I ran into you down on the street/Then it turned out to only be a dream) are not uncommon, because telling a story that makes sense is the most important thing.

See also

Advice on what to do when you do rhyme