Lisnaholic

I guess a lyricist needs all the help he can get, and when someone realized that Moon and June rhyme, it was just too useful to resist - at least it was until it became a laughable cliché.

Another lyricist´s friend is the word Tonight. It´s easy to find a rhyme for it, and if you use it in a song, it has this great advantage: your song will forever be about now or the near future. It´s always going to sound relevant and immediate; Much better to sing, "When I see you tonight...." than "When I see you on Monday November the Second ... "

Songwriters have exploited this happy property of Tonight for many years.Without doing any research, these are the ones that come to mind:-
Tonight from West Side Story
Tonight´s The Night by Neil Young
Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton

But it wasn´t until the banal and repetitive, "Tonight´s gonna be a good, good night" that I finally overdosed on the word and wanted it to be consigned to the scrapheap along with moon and June.

Does anyone else want to comment on the great or ghastly songs built around this word ?

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Taxman

Dunno, but another cliche I know is something like that : "as long as there's stars above, you're the one I love"...etc, rhyming love-above-thinking of is pretty disgusting


As sure as there's stars above,
You're are the one I love
The one I'm thinking of...

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Lisnaholic

Never particularly noticed that before, but you´re right, there are so many songs about "the stars above"

You and True have also been over-used. In their early days even the mighty Beatles were prepared to write:-

Love love me do
You know I love you
I´ll always be true

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Taxman

Yeah, but it wasn't as much cliche back then and nobody really cared about lyrics in pop song before Dylan.

Edit. And this is not a fanboyish attempt to say those lyrics are good I just pointed it out.

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Taxman

But anyway, those cliches are annoying, but if you write pop music about love, it is more annoying if you try to write something complex and uncliched and it fails cos you have no skill to do so...
Here's an example:
You are my oxygen, you are my own titanic
Every now and then I hope you won't sink
Let me see trough your mind opaque, it is not too late
We were brought together by a simple twist of fate etc...

So if you are not able to write anything profound, it is better to use cliches than to try to write anything pseudo profound like I just did

And so on.

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Taxman

So if you find yourself rhyming sink and titanic (it is not perfect rhyme anyway) then maybe it is better just rhyme I love you-you know it's true

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Isbjørn

Dude, don't triple post, if someone hasn't replied yet, just use the edit button. Makes the thread more tidy.

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Taxman

Yeah, I know I should not. But it is easier to write a new post than to click the edit-button. But I'll try not to do that again

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Lisnaholic

Yes, a pop song in the early sixties had to be about "loving you", or it risked being labled as a novelty song. All that the lyrics were expected to do was to fit the music - if they made sense as well, that was a bonus.

You make a good point about the pseudo profound;" You are my own titanic" is wonderful, but I imagine you just made it up, right?

Not much better are these words that ELP used to ruin an otherwise decent song called Take A Pebble. The way the singer delivers these gems of wisdom is like,"This is second only in gravity to Moses passing on the word of God"...

EDIT: quite right about the editing, Briks !

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Taxman

Yeah, it took 3 seconds...
Good examples about pseudo profound lyrics are some Yes' lyrics.
Also if some one like Britney Spears started to make profound songs (or at least tried to do) it would be inadequate. I don't like her anyway tho. Or imagine the melody of She Loves You, and lyrics about the reason of our existence. How good would they match each others?

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