Songs Which Lazily rhyme "Life" with "Wife"

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

1. "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground -- "...it's my wife, heh, it's my life, `cos when the mainline..."

2. "Iron Horse" by Motorhead -- "..Iron Horse his wife, Iron Horse his LIFE!"

3. "Be My Wife" by Bowie -- "Please Be Mine/Share My Life/Say You Will/Be My Wife"

4. "Wild Blue Yonder" by the Screaming Blue Messiahs -- "...leave your children, shoot your wife....head out for the country life"

Otherz?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:13 (twenty-two years ago)

"'Motherfucker why don't you change your life'/I'm thinkin motherfucker why don't I change my wife" Beanie Sigel.

Thats not lazy though. Thats the Beans style.

― Johnny Badlees (crispssssss), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:16 (twenty-two years ago)

"Man I don't want your wife, stop screamin' it's not the end of your life"

Public Enemy's "Fear Of A Black Planet"

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:18 (twenty-two years ago)

all this assuming rhyming life with wife is lazy by default i guess

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Not lazy? :
John Entwistle - My Wife
.. It would have been so easy to do a wife/life rhyme and he completely avoids it..

"My life's in jeopardy
Murdered in cold blood is what I'm gonna be
I ain't been home since Friday night
And now my wife is coming after me"

― dave225 (Dave225), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

"change your clothes change your life CHANGE YOUR LIFE/
gonna turn into a 9-year-old Hindu boy get rid of my wife!/
c'mon step right up" - Tom Waits "Step Right Up"

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Two from "Good Morning, Good Morning" by the Beatles:

"Nothing to do to
save his life
call his wife
in"

"Everyone you see is full of life
It's time for tea and meet the wife."

― s woods, Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Robyn Hitchcock managed to avoid it in "My Wife & My Dead Wife", so hats off to'im.

Worst example of lazy rhyming (non "wife/life" that is): "Patience" by Guns'n'Roses: take it/break it/make it/shake it/etc

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 30 October 2003 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

You were the love For certain of my life You
were simply my beloved wife

uh, natalie merchant is lazy.

― dz, Thursday, 30 October 2003 17:27 (twenty-two years ago)

"And we'll be friends for life / She'll be just like a wife / I'm going to catch that horse if I can..."

The Byrds - Chestnut Mare

That song is amazing BTW, it uses what appear to be the cheesiest, most banal lyrics they ever wrote to say something really quite deep. God bless 'em!

― NickB (NickB), Thursday, 30 October 2003 17:32 (twenty-two years ago)

love/above

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 30 October 2003 17:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Meth's "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need":

"Word life, you don't need a ring to be my wife."

― Rich, Thursday, 30 October 2003 17:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Beach Boys: Solar System

"If Mars had life on it, I might find my wife on it"

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 30 October 2003 18:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Alex just wishes all those songs could be about S Trife instead.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 30 October 2003 18:32 (twenty-two years ago)

"Parchman Farm" by Blue Cheer

― Phil Freeman (Phil Freeman), Thursday, 30 October 2003 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

The theme song to Green Acres

"you are my wife. good bye city life"

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 30 October 2003 19:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Hahahaha

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 30 October 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Climax Blues Band - "I Love You"

..you came along and stole my heart when you entered my life /
ooh babe, you got what it takes so I made you my wife..

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Thursday, 30 October 2003 19:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Capt. Beefheart - "Wild Life" (and my wife)

― BrianB, Thursday, 30 October 2003 19:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I actually don't think the Method Man rhyme is very lazy at all--it's pretty clever, he makes two cliches ("wife"/"life" rhyming + eternal-devotion pledge) them jump a bit (by twisting the cliche of "be my wife" into "you don't need a ring to..."). plus the lines are short and don't call attention to themselves, so it's relatively painless.

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 30 October 2003 19:33 (twenty-two years ago)

p. diddy people! I need a girl feat. usher:

"I need a girl to ride, ride, ride/I need a girl to be my wife/I need a girl who's mine all mine/I need a girl in my life"

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 30 October 2003 19:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Martin Gore really likes to use "violence" and "silence"
it seems like this one would get used a lot, but i can't think of any other cases

― Felcher (Felcher), Thursday, 30 October 2003 20:08 (twenty-two years ago)

The theme song to Green Acres

Don't be disrespecting Vic Mizzy. The Man's a musical genious.

Munsters Theme, dude.

― dave225 (Dave225), Thursday, 30 October 2003 20:19 (twenty-two years ago)

That D-mode song has the worst lyrics of all time

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 30 October 2003 20:21 (twenty-two years ago)

which D-mode song doesn't?

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 30 October 2003 20:25 (twenty-two years ago)

I said, honey, I`ll live with you for the rest of my life
She said no hugg-y, no kiss-y until you make me your wife
-- Georgia Satellites

Not really lazy, since the whole song is structured to lead up to the rhyme.

― weatheringdaleson (weatheringdaleson), Thursday, 30 October 2003 20:51 (twenty-two years ago)

"That D-mode song has the worst lyrics of all time"
were you referring to leave in silence or enjoy the silence?
"which D-mode song doesn't?"
while ill agree with that, i maintain that they were one of the best, if not THE best pop band of the 80's (and spanning into the 90's)

― Felcher (Felcher), Thursday, 30 October 2003 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
etc.

― Greg, Thursday, 30 October 2003 21:09 (twenty-two years ago)

"when my boy walks down the street" - magnetic fields. "amazing, he's a whole new form of life/ blue eyes blazing, and he's going to be my wife"

stephin merritt why won't you be my boyfriend?????!!!

― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Thursday, 30 October 2003 21:36 (twenty-two years ago)

"Promise me you'll be safe as houses
long as you remember who's wearing the trousers."

not wife/life, but classic D-mode cringy-ness.

― ddrake, Thursday, 30 October 2003 21:37 (twenty-two years ago)

if we're going to go on about DM cringiness we might as well start a new thread, because there are way too many examples of it to waste on a semi-related thread.

― Felcher (Felcher), Thursday, 30 October 2003 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

- Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

The rest of it is better though.

― Ben, Thursday, 30 October 2003 21:54 (twenty-two years ago)

"Will you make me so happy for the rest of my life?
Will you take me away and will you make me your wife?" -- Meat Loaf, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light".

Kurt showed a little more originality, though:

"Married... Buried..." -- Nirvana, "All Apologies"

― David A. (Davant), Thursday, 30 October 2003 23:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah come on, I can't believe you guys missed the most hyped single of the year:

there was no intention of her being wife/that she knows this she's ending your life

― Siegbran (eofor), Thursday, 30 October 2003 23:13 (twenty-two years ago)

"Now the funniest thing about Bert's loss of life
Was that he was getting his gun out so he could kill his wife"

Killdozer - "The Rub"

― udu wudu (udu wudu), Thursday, 30 October 2003 23:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Uriah Heep - "All My Life"

I've never ever thought I was looking for a wife /
But I think I could love her for the rest of my life

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Thursday, 30 October 2003 23:54 (twenty-two years ago)

why is it lazy?

― thom west (thom w), Friday, 31 October 2003 01:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Everybody who's somebody does it!!

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Friday, 31 October 2003 01:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Paradise is very nice.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 31 October 2003 01:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Worst example of lazy rhyming (non "wife/life" that is): "Patience" by Guns'n'Roses: take it/break it/make it/shake it/etc

No!!! That's what makes it good, see, because you realize then that they had no idea of what they were doing, they just wanted to write a ballad so they could sing it to chicks!!!

― Dave M. (rotten03), Friday, 31 October 2003 03:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Some of these are lazy, but a lot aren't. It's a natural, beautiful, possibly coincidental rhyme. A wife is for life. Like the sky is high. (It's where you fly).

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Friday, 31 October 2003 03:29 (twenty-two years ago)

it's not as if there are a lot of other options. according to the two rhyming dictionaries sitting in front of me, the only four other english words that are available for such a rhyme are fife, knife, rife and strife. there's not a whole lot of use for fife in most songs these days (at least as a lyric; perhaps musically more songs should use one), and it ain't easy to end a sentence with rife. leaving only knife and strife.

so unless you want to argue that rhyming, period, is lazy (and please, don't!), what do you expect songwriters to do?

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 31 October 2003 05:43 (twenty-two years ago)

so unless you want to argue that rhyming, period, is lazy (and please, don't!), what do you expect songwriters to do?

Get a thesaurus and come up with other words for "life" and "wife".

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 31 October 2003 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I was actually going to add that the Meth quote wasn't so lazy. I mean, it's internal -- surely that counts for something.

― Rich, Friday, 31 October 2003 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

or you could rhyme life with s. trife.

― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Friday, 31 October 2003 05:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I like this one, from Beck's "Sissyneck":

"I got a stolen wife / And a rhinestone life / And some good ol' boys"

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 31 October 2003 05:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Get a thesaurus and come up with other words for "life" and "wife"
so ya think this woulda been a better lyric for bowie: Please Be Mine/Share My Fate/Say You Will/Be My Mate"?

or maybe "Please Be Mine/Share My House/Say You Will/Be My Spouse"?

personally, i think when the simple, direct words work, you should use the simple, direct words.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 31 October 2003 06:03 (twenty-two years ago)

personally, i think when the simple, direct words work, you should use the simple, direct words.

And all I'm saying is: Avoid Cliché Whenever Possible!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 31 October 2003 06:39 (twenty-two years ago)

for fucks sake the best way to avoid hack-rhymes is to break on different words and put the hack-word somewhere else in the phrase!

also metrical rhymes. so its not just the last syllable that's matching.

begging you to be mine/say you will and be kind/my time and yours shared together/be my wife now forever

or etcet.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 31 October 2003 07:35 (twenty-two years ago)

I want to talk to you all night do you like me?
I want to find out about your life do you like me?
Could you ever be my wife do you love me?

(Mekons - Where were you - Fast 1979)

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 31 October 2003 11:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Erykah Badu in 'the other side of the game': "I ain't tryin' to run your life/ but I want you to do what's right/ I'm your wife"

What was the hyped record siegbran quoted? I have somehow missed it!

― M Carty (mj_c), Friday, 31 October 2003 11:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll probably get struck down for this, but I'd defend at least the VU and Cohen uses of "wife/life." Although it may be tied up with my brainwashing as to Lou & Lenny's respective Canonical Songwriter profiles.

I see the point in "Heroin" being that the drug has replaced everything, precluding (specifically) healthy relationships. Plus that song has all that weird shit about wanting to be a sailor.

Even considering the "wife/life" thing, the excerpted lines from "Famous Blue Raincoat" are pretty goddamn desolate, don't seem tossed off at all and are not something I could imagine coming from anybody else.

In general I think I would kinda agree with Eyeball Kix' earlier comment, even though the "fly/high/sky" drives me up the fookin' wall. Much more egregious than wife/life... it's much emptier to me, and pretty much always empty in a bad way.

― wl (wl), Friday, 31 October 2003 11:59 (twenty-two years ago)

It was Dizzee Rascal - I Luv U

― Siegbran (eofor), Friday, 31 October 2003 12:36 (twenty-two years ago)

"Now the funniest thing about Bert's loss of life
Was that he was getting his gun out so he could kill his wife"
Killdozer - "The Rub"

-- udu wudu (guapotou...), October 30th, 2003 6:49 PM.

.. But put it in context of the whole record, which also has:
"Last night, he came to our house
to have some beers and to eat
He called Lois a cunt
and said he didn't like the meat"

..The lazy rhymes work for Killdozer.

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 31 October 2003 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

also metrical rhymes. so its not just the last syllable that's matching. begging you to be mine/say you will and be kind/my time and yours shared together/be my wife now forever

not to be anal or anything, but none of that rhymes.

though i do accept your point.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 31 October 2003 15:15 (twenty-two years ago)

My most hated lyric of all time:

Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball.

― boldbury, Friday, 31 October 2003 15:44 (twenty-two years ago)

"You're the one I want in my life / But I already got a wife" (Fabolous)

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 31 October 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Get out of my life
Don't take my wife
Don't come back

"Respectable", the Stones

― David Gates of Delirium, Friday, 31 October 2003 18:22 (twenty-two years ago)

wtf? that totally rhymes!

not super metrically adept mind you but "yours shared together/mine now forever" sure does.

okay maybe they're slant rhymes but those work better anyway.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 31 October 2003 18:40 (twenty-two years ago)

altho together/forever is a pretty hack thing too.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 31 October 2003 18:40 (twenty-two years ago)

well, yeah, that's all i'm saying. they're slant rhymes, imperfect rhymes, whatever you wanna call 'em. but they're not actual rhymes.

and because of that i'd say that together/forever is way more hackneyed than wife/life. because together/forever breaks the rules and still manages to come up with the completely obvious result. wife/life is obvious because it follows the rules, which is a whole 'nother thing.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 31 October 2003 18:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey, Rick Astley is mad at you for that, Sterling.

http://www.c2m.fi/images_denmark/rick_ashley/billeder/01.jpg

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 31 October 2003 18:57 (twenty-two years ago)

p.s. if you want to read about how writers of imperfect rhymes have all but ruined someone's life, check out jimmy webb's "tunesmith: inside the art of songwriting." not a particularly good book, all in all, but still an interesting peak inside the mind of an old-school pop guy who can neither stand, nor deal with, the reckless, imperfecttly rhyming youth who have usurped him.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 31 October 2003 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

make that interesting *peek*

and pretend the imperfect spelling of imperfectly was on purpose.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 31 October 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life
Choose an ugly girl to be your wife

I'm just saying.

― Shmuel (shmuel), Friday, 31 October 2003 23:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Lou Reed, "My House":

"I've really got a lucky life
My writing, my motorcycle and my wife"

― Sam J. (samjeff), Saturday, 1 November 2003 00:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/Atrocious.

See, if you stick the nonsense word BEFORE the real word, then it doesn't seem as if you made up the nonsense word to force a rhyme. But as the song is pure form anyway, this might be a moot point. And Dick Van Dyke can dance, even if he can't do a Cockney accent.

― D. Strauss (musicmope), Saturday, 1 November 2003 19:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey, it stuck my real name in. What the fuck is wrong with this world?

― mopepope (musicmope), Saturday, 1 November 2003 19:18 (twenty-two years ago)

"so unless you want to argue that rhyming, period, is lazy (and please, don't!), what do you expect songwriters to do?"

"Get a thesaurus and come up with other words for "life" and "wife"."

< ahem >

http://www.sb-photographies.com/musique/groupes/k/killing/killing2

"Everybody's looking for a life looking for a wife - no escape....
Nervous System, I don't like it!"

Ha ha ha ha, hee hee hee,
Alex in NYC is going to kill me!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Saturday, 1 November 2003 23:07 (twenty-two years ago)

even the great songwriters of the world resort to it once in a while:

Come in to my door, be the light of my life
Come in to my door, come and be my wife

― bahtology, Saturday, 1 November 2003 23:11 (twenty-two years ago)

do you know whats worse than life/wife? girl/world. ugh.

― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Sunday, 2 November 2003 02:29 (twenty-two years ago)

and of course that one, too, goes into the box of rhymes that don't actually rhyme.

but you must make an exception for big star, who managed to turned "i'm in love with a girl/finest girl in the world" into one of the most beautiful couplets that ever was.

― fact checking cuz, Sunday, 2 November 2003 02:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Nicely done, Stew, but I never said the Joke were categorically perfect lyricists all the time (even a casual glance through the couplets on Outside the Gate, for example, would reveal some truly awful clunkers).

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Sunday, 2 November 2003 20:10 (twenty-two years ago)

What ARE the rest of the lyrics to that song 'though Alex? It's starting to really bug me! I'm sure I knew them off by heart 20 years ago but I'm buggered if I can remember 'em now (something about "take your money take your car it's a bit of a joke...." maybe?) and I couldn't find them on the bleedin' interweb anywhere!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Monday, 3 November 2003 09:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha ha ha ha, hee hee hee,
Alex in NYC is going to kill me!

Now imagine if Bowie sang it that way.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 3 November 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

"So what did I do with the rest of my life
I wandered around, missing my wife"

..Lazy, yes. A dog of a lyric in an otherwise great song.

-Secondhand Furniture, Go-Betweens

― dave225 (Dave225), Monday, 3 November 2003 18:11 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.