It must have been easier to write lyrics back in the old days. If you couldn’t rhyme a word easily, you could just switch the words around into a backward phrase and try to rhyme something else. It was standard procedure in classical poems, hymns and even popular songs, and it was called “poetic license.”
Twisting and Turning
“He went to the barn” could be twisted to become “To the barn he went,” and if that didn’t suggest any nice rhymes, you could open up other possibilities with “To the barn he did go.”
The ancient Christmas carol, “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” must take the prize for the most remarkably convoluted line: “. . . the which his mother Mary did nothing take in scorn.” Buddy says you wouldn’t want to ask that guy for directions. (And how many kids have grown up thinking it was “the witch his mother Mary?” Always sing your lyric aloud to yourself.)
Archaic Contractions
In the old days you could use ‘twas and e’en and o’er, and shorten the eternal to th ‘eternal, if it helped put words in the right places. If we wrote like that today we’d be laughed at. We modern-day poets have lost our license.
Writing Conversationally
Of course, if you’re writing in a lofty or traditional hymn style or quoting a scripture, then it’s okay; go ahead and turn your phrases any which way that works. But modern-day pop-style lyrics are expected to move straight ahead, just as they would in conversation. “To the barn he did go” would clang even harder if you had only one such line while the rest of the song was written in a modern style.
If you look hard enough, you can probably find a song that violates these principles we write about and still succeeds, but we can think of very few successful pop-type songs that have gotten away with backward phrasing. (Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” did with “All my dreams fulfill.”) There is no absolute rule against it—after all, these are principles not unbreakable laws.
Something’s gotta give!
Losing the freedom of backward phrasing has made rhyming a lot harder and presents a good case for near rhyme. So some might say, “Something’s gotta give— either my perfect rhyming or my sanity.” Some writers look for near rhymes anyway, to maintain a casualness in their lyrics.
On a historical note, rhyming hasn’t always been popular with everyone: An introduction to John Milton’s (1608-1674) heroic poem, Paradise Lost, described rhyme as “the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre.” The writer of the introduction eschewed “the jingling sounds of like endings” and “the troublesome and modern bondage of riming.”
Talk about hard writing—Paradise Lost is a long poem—a 300-page book, in which every line has ten syllables. On top of that, Milton was blind! When we’re struggling to rhyme our little songs, let’s remember Milton. Does anyone work that hard any more?
Don’t be an early settler.
So, what standard will you set for yourself as a lyricist? Aim high. Work hard. Your standard will determine how far you go.
We’d like to see you opt for the highest standard within reason, preferring perfect rhymes when possible, but realistically it’s better to use a near rhyme, or no rhyme, than to say something you didn’t mean to say just to force a rhyme. If you have to decide between being slick and being honest, go for honesty.
But if you’re one of those obsessive types driven to perfectionism, a word of advice?—don’t drive yourself crazy—it isn’t worth that.