Bad Lyrical Rhyming- Page 3

[mattvcrewse]

Posted: 3/21/05 at 9:08pm

But becuase it's comedy, it's supposed to be funny, so it doesn't bother me enough to irk me, not nearly as much as J&H. The thing with "King of Broadway" was Brooks rhymed that much because he could, therefore it was meant as a joke, and it worked.

[jacobtsf]

Posted: 3/21/05 at 9:28pm

I have been lucky enough to see an amazing production of J&H with a Hyde and Lucy who had perfect chemistry and the rhyming in Dangerous Game just works, with the dry humping , the passion, the dark lighting.

[mattvcrewse]

Posted: 3/22/05 at 7:42pm

Haha... yes the dry-humping. Do you remember Hasselhoff's googlie-eyes and his hilarious dry-humping? The girl playing Lucy was convincingly frightened! Good stuff...

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 3/22/05 at 8:49pm

Something to consider...

Sometimes the rhyming is "bad" intentionally to play up the charcater. FINIAN'S RAINBOW has a wonderful song called "Something Sort of Grandish" where the leprechaun, Og, declares his love with a series of "-ish" rhymes (ie. granish/sugar-candish, darish/I don't careish etc) but that is the way the chracter talks.

What I hate is when words are mis-accented or have the pronunciation changed to make them rhyme: saw/before do not rhyme unless you mispronounce it with a southern accent(be-faw)which in JOSEPH/DREAMCOAT is wrong. How about in KISS ME KATE: "Where is the fun I used to find? Where has it gone? Gone with the wind!" Ok. To make that rhyme you have to pronounce wind and in wind a watch, but the phrase obviously should be gone with the wind. (I used to think teh line was Gone with the Wine" as in it's finished, done.)

Mark Andrew

[Sporkie]

Posted: 3/22/05 at 9:24pm

Wow...I always thought it was gone with the wine, too. I'm so devastated. Gone with the wine would make sense, too, b/c when wine and drunkeness goes, so does fun. I'm so dissapointed in that song now.

[SahDu]

Posted: 3/22/05 at 11:01pm

How about pretty much anything from Big the Musical...some of the lyrics in that show...wow...

[LostLeander]

Posted: 3/23/05 at 12:59am

I think just about all the lyrics for Miss Saigon are God-Awful. Sure, it may have sounded GORGEOUS in French, but what in Sondheim's name happened when they translated it?

"He's here, he's here,
He's so near,
We might breathe the same air tonight,
Your father's here.

A) Any lyricist that thinks "We might breathe the same air" is a suitable lyric deserves to be hung.
B) Rhyme scheme? AABA? A lot the rhymes in this show are SO haphazard.

And when they do rhyme, they are SO forced:
Exhibit A - the here and near rhyme.

*Shudders*.

[Melodramatist]

Posted: 3/23/05 at 1:32am

I'm all in favor of near rhymes, but when they don't come off to good effect they can be maddening as anything. An example is the title number from HAPPY HUNTING:
"Everyone's on the hunt
For whatever they want,
And whatever you want,
Happy Hunting!"
You can't help but almost hear the first "want" as "wunt." By the time you get to the second "hunt," the whole lyric has gone soggy on you.

[paradox_error]

Posted: 3/23/05 at 3:04am

Wow.

I really like some of the lyrics stated here.

And some of the clunkers in the classics are forgivable because they're...well...classics...

[phantom_tenor]

Posted: 3/23/05 at 4:00am

Too long he's preyed on us,
But now we know:
The phantom of the opera is there,
Deep down below.


Can you get anymore obvious?

[Glinda's Candy]

Posted: 3/23/05 at 4:33am

Oh, goodness me... I simply cannot sit by and let people go on about "saw/before" and "oz/was". If the words are pronounced as they traditionally, linguistically should be, there is absolutely no difference, phonetically, between "saw and before" or "oz and was". I am british and, for one, happen to pronounce 'saw' and 'before' exactly the same, and 'oz' and 'was' for that matter. Did it ever occur to you people that maybe these lyrics weren't written for characters with thick New York accents? Or a Texas twang? I am not trying to be offensive, but really - the way that many of you complaining message-posters pronounce these words is not always the way the writers intended them to sound.
X

Updated On: 3/23/05 at 04:33 AM

[JHartnow]

Posted: 3/23/05 at 9:25am

I, too, disagree with some of the choices on this thread, but to each his own!