Rhyme Schemes for the 21st century

It's difficult to say anything original on the subject of love.

Still, the Gorillaz have one very nice line in the song 'To Binge'.

"My heart is in economy,

Due to this autonomy."

What a great way to express a feeling of unpleasant dejection, linking it to cheap air travel. Now that's an angle I'm sure nobody else has tackled before - it's only recognisable to a listener from about 1970 onwards.

I also like the second line though. I suspect (perhaps unfairly) that 'autonomy' was chosen mainly to rhyme with economy. Still, whether intended or not, it's a very good choice.Most love affairs don't break up because of impersonal circumstances. They break up for much more mundane and less romantic reasons - Tom got bored of being with Sue and cheated with Sue's friend, Sally felt that Tim had gotten clingy and pathetic, etc. But autonomy is exactly what it is - things fall apart mainly because at least one party wanted it.

You'd never get this sense listening to love songs. The theme of 'The Lovers vs. A Harsh Society Trying to Prevent Their Love' is one of the most overused (and lame) ideas in pop culture. Apparently 'Your Love Will Be Thwarted By External Circumstance' is much more likely in song-lyric land than 'Your Love Will Be Abandoned By Your Own Choice Because You Became Bored With It'.

Compare, for instance, 'Not Gonna Get Us' by tATu:

'They're not gonna get us,

Not now I love ya.'

Yeah, that's the problem - before you didn't love each other, and now you do, everything's fixed!

Dumbasses.

A Lovely Song, But...

The song is 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' by Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo`ole.


As a starting point, I find it hilarious that when your surname is "Kamakawiwo`ole", the part that gets a shortened to a nickname is his first name, Israel (shortened to 'Iz'). Yeah, that's the part people will have difficulty with!





It's a lovely cover version - the ukulele makes a great accompaniment, and his voice is ideally suited to the song - soft, and yet able to reach high notes while still sounding deep. Perhaps most strikingly, the segue into 'What a Wonderful World' (and back again) works perfectly, and makes a whole that is larger than the sum of the parts. I listened to this a lot, and really loved it. 


That is, until I started noticing one aspect that, once discovered, I couldn't help but be bothered by.
(below the jump, in case you don't want the song ruined for you)

Two Best Metaphors of the Day

And both of them are from Frank Fleming:

"So the Democrats sucked. ....

It’s Godzilla-smashing-through-a-city level of suck — but a really patronizing Godzilla who says you’re just too stupid and hateful to see all the buildings he’s saved or created as he smashes everything apart. Or, to use Obama’s favorite analogy, you have a car stuck in ditch, so you call the mechanic, but the only tool he brings with him is a sledgehammer. And then he smashes your car to pieces and charges you $100,000 for his service. Finally, he calls you racist for complaining. Obama and the Democrats have been so awful, it’s hard for the human brain to even comprehend."

Awesome.

Free advice for musicians composing song lyrics

If you're ever tempted to make one of the following crimes against the English language, you should probably shoot yourself in the face. For some reason, a lot of the worst ones relate to the area of love. Behold, The Most Annoying and Clichéd Rhyme Schemes in the Song Lyrics World:

-Rhyming 'Maybe' with 'Baby'. Apparently equivocation is the most common sentiment people feel vis a vis their loved ones.

-Rhyming 'Making Up' with 'Breaking Up'. Oooh, such a clever contrast! When you do this, my hemorrhoids start acheing up.

-Rhyming 'Love' with 'Glove', 'Dove', 'Above' or 'Uv' (Mark Steyn had a great essay about this). For love, you're best off not putting it at the end of a line.

-Rhyming 'Die For you' with 'Lie for you' and/or 'Cry for You'. What kind of loser would want these to be their expressions of love anyway?

-In much the same fashion, rhyming 'Knees' with 'Please' (double points off if you're 'on your knees, begging please'. Get up off your damn knees and show some backbone, man!)

-Rhyming any combination of 'mad', 'bad', 'sad', glad' or 'had'. Honestly, this is so hackneyed, obvious and infuriating

Doing any of these will place you permanently on my $#!7 list - not that this on its own is reason to shoot oneself in the face, but your lack of creativity will be.

Best Correction Ever

When spellcheck isn't enough

"Correction:

This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men. "

Via Jonah Goldberg's The G-File

Weight Loss and Agency

I saw this excellent billboard ad today for the lap band. The slogan read as follows:

'Diets Fail! The Lap Band Works!'

I just loved the attribution of agency in the first part. The diet, that inanimate abstract object, is failing. How exactly the diet fails is not clear, but it's certainly not your fault. You have nothing to do with it.

Compare the following alternative formulations:

'You fail at dieting!'

'You fail to lose weight!'

'You fail to stick to your diet!'

These would suggest that:

a) that you need to try harder, although

b) your cause is probably hopeless anyway

neither of which spurs one to buy expensive surgery.

I have a lot of sympathy for overweight people, and I'm far from sold on the 'fatties just need to try harder' school of thought. That said, ignoring any choice component at all is a hilarious stroke of marketing genius.

Tropes that make no sense - the 'I Love You' pickup line

I was watching the first episode from the new season of House the other day, and found myself irritated that they decided to repeat one of Hollywood's most nonsensical staples: characters who declare that they love someone, either immediately after the first kiss, or (even worse) before they've even kissed for the first time.

Honestly, is there anyone who is a) above the age of 13, and b) not a functional retard who has actually done this? Is there anyone, man or woman, who would not frantically start looking for the exits if presented with this pearler of a pickup line?

I suspect part of the reason for this is that scriptwriters need a quick way to create emotional tension. Just putting a margin note to the effect of 'have a bunch of slightly awkward pauses and uninspired sounding conversation as you both look a little too long at each other, then look away pretending it didn't happen' might be a bit hit-and-miss for some actors. But Hugh Laurie? Really?

In the episode, Cuddy remarks that 'I told you I loved you, and you didn't say it back.' House has some throwaway joke to brush it off, which sounded jarring given his character. Surely someone with such a piercing (albeit cynical) understanding of human nature, along with a healthy dose of misogyny, wouldn't just let that slide?

My answer would have been 'No $#!7, eh? That's because we hooked up for the first time less than 24 hours ago, and that's not quite how love works for me.'

Yellow

I've often thought that many songs are made by a single good line.

I think Coldplay's 'Yellow' is a great example of this. The subject is a girl, and it's a love song. If ever there was a more tilled field in the annals of poetic inspiration, I don't know what it would be. It's damn hard to say anything original about love. Most of it is pure boilerplate, too:

'Look at the stars.

Look how they shine for you,

And all the things you do.

Yeah they were all yellow.'

Not very inspiring stuff.

But there, right in the middle, is a line that always stuck with me:

'For you I'd bleed myself dry,

For you I'd bleed myself dry.'

It works so well, for many reasons.

They say it twice, with the pause and drop in the instrumentation before the repetition to make sure you pay attention. Then the great guitar riff comes in powerfully. But that's it -it's never uttered again, even though it's clear that the whole song is building to that point. The worst thing you can do with a good idea is bash the audience over the head with it by repeating it over and over.

I think it's the most interesting sentiment about love that I can recall being said in the last 10 years.