FINDING RHYMES WITHIN THE LINES

Here’s an example from The Witness, from the song “When You Find the Truth,” sung by Peter’s wife:

When I wore my bridal veil and wedding gown,
I said my vow and dreamed of how we’d settle down;
Of course I thought my husband ought to stick around.
But now it seems that the man of my dreams is always out of town.

It can also work in a more poignant song, as in the chorus of “Seasons of the Soul,” by Jamie Owens-Collins:

A season in the rain will end at last
A season full of pain will surely pass
The reason will be plain some day
When Love reveals His goal
Such are the seasons of the soul
Such are the seasons of the soul

Notice also the long e sound in “reveals,” which, although used with different consonants, chimes with the e sounds in all the other lines. This is called assonance.

The last two lines contain another form of assonance called alliteration, in this case a double alliteration—three words beginning with the same letter, in this case s. (There are lots of esses in this one, but enough separation to avoid excessive sibilance.) This is a beautifully crafted lyric that demonstrates both talent and skill.

Another beautiful example of inner rhyme is “You’ll never know how slow the moments go till I’m near to you,” from “The Very Thought of You,” by Ray Noble.

A variation on inner rhyme is contiguous rhyme, in which two adjacent words rhyme with each other, as in Cole Porter’s “Night and Day:” “There’s an oh, such a hungry yearning, burning inside of me.”

Make Your Own Pattern

Here’s an interesting rhyme pattern from the opening lines of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten”: “I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined / I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned.”

Short, punchy, exactly rhymed phrases. The rest of the song has less rhyme, much of it near-rhyme: “distance—inhibitions; unspoken—open,” or no rhyme at all.

So, Natasha has an extremely hooky, perfect opening, but if she’d continued that rhyme pattern throughout the song, she would have tied herself in knots and she wouldn’t have had a hit. That’s why she didn’t do it.

Just placing rhymes on the ends of lines isn’t enough for a good lyricist. If you stretch your imagination and find them in unexpected places, your song quality will reach new heights.