Songs with very long rhyming lines

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As in:

"I was walking around the flower show like a leper coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair, up against the pink and purple wisteria"
-Nick Cave, "Nature Boy"

and

"A family of musicians took shelter for the night in the little harbor church of St. Cecilia
Two guitars, bata, bass drum, and tambourine, the Rose of Jericho and bougainvillea"
-Paul Simon, "The Coast"

I know it's hard to distinguish between ABCB lyrics, where the first and third lines don't rhyme, versus two very long rhyming lines, but the former might have more of a breath between instead of long sinewy lines.

a tidy profit in Russia (Eazy), Monday, 18 February 2013 00:55 (twelve years ago)

I always start a poetry unit with "Eleanor Rigby," and it sort of fits (half of each couplet is an extra-long line):

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

Etc.

clemenza, Monday, 18 February 2013 01:18 (twelve years ago)

eleanor rigby sounds to me like a line of two stressed syllables, a line of five, and then another line of two, with an ABB rhyme structure.

ELeanor RIGby
PICKS up the RICE in the CHURCH where a WEDding has BEEN
LIVES in a DREAM

wk, Monday, 18 February 2013 01:37 (twelve years ago)

i had skin like leather and the diamond hard look of a cobra
i was born blue and weathered but I burst just like a supernova
i could walk like brando right into the sun, then dance just like a casanova

fact checking cuz, Monday, 18 February 2013 19:13 (twelve years ago)

Roky Erickson had a few I noticed, but can't think of them offhand.

some of the ones on Bull of the Woods and The Evil one though.
I remember counting 13 syllables in a few lines.

Stevolende, Monday, 18 February 2013 19:19 (twelve years ago)

These can be considered very, very short lines in AAAABCCCCB format, but I don't think they are:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People call, say, "Beware, doll, you're bound to fall" you thought they were all a-kiddin' you

The whole song, obvs.

Gollum: "Hot, Ready and Smeagol!" (Phil D.), Monday, 18 February 2013 19:29 (twelve years ago)

a seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace
and rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace

reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 18 February 2013 19:46 (twelve years ago)

There's something called a feminine rhyme, I think, in which the final three syllables have to rhyme. The main example I can think of is a Richard Thompson song covered by Marshall Crenshaw called "Valerie," in which the end of each verse rhymes with the title.

Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 February 2013 19:55 (twelve years ago)

OK, two or more syllables rhyme, last syllables unstressed. Although in this case, when he sings he does stress the final syllable.

Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 February 2013 19:59 (twelve years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGhHbJo7PCE

Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 February 2013 20:07 (twelve years ago)

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me.

All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Ev'rything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo

We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.

So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We'll murder them{ all }amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgen!
To poison a pigeon in the park.

Daniel Giraffe, Monday, 18 February 2013 21:55 (twelve years ago)

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

Gollum: "Hot, Ready and Smeagol!" (Phil D.), Monday, 18 February 2013 23:55 (twelve years ago)

Awesome.

Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 February 2013 23:57 (twelve years ago)

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white.
And in between the moon and you the angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.

ROUND HEEEEERE

Doc Vig (Eazy), Tuesday, 19 February 2013 00:37 (twelve years ago)

every MC paul barman line pretty much

william tyler the creator (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 19 February 2013 00:48 (twelve years ago)

Shriekback's "Nemesis" rhymes "nemesis" with "parthenogenesis". Probably one of the few times the latter word has even been used in a pop song.

Tuomas, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 09:26 (twelve years ago)

Canned Heat recorded a 20-minute track called "Parthenogenesis" back in '68, but they didn't use the word in the title.

Sir Lord Baltimora (Myonga Vön Bontee), Tuesday, 19 February 2013 15:01 (twelve years ago)

Yes Tuomas and parthenogenesis formed an entire line of the song on its own.

Daniel Giraffe, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 18:55 (twelve years ago)

xpost,the longest rhymes in the Pirates of Penzance are probably the following:

Pirate King: "For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over!"

everything, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 19:54 (twelve years ago)

"Caroline! (Caroline!) She's the reason for the word BITCH
I hope she's speeding on the way to the club trying to hurry up to get to some baller or singer or somebody like that and try to put on her makeup in the mirror and crash, crash, craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash into a DITCH"

Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 22:23 (twelve years ago)


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