Originally Posted By: Noel96
Hi floyd,

Another masterpiece! And as others have already said, there’s nothing that sounds dated about this at all. It’s still rings fresh to the ears.


It has been a nice surprise that folks seem to think that this has "held up" and does sound "dated"...

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Your work is always superb. This is no exception. Your band is a perfect fit. You and Reid Richmond have written a really fine song. And the cream in this cup of coffee is the best backup (and lead) singer I know. Janice’s vocals never fail to work magic smile Everything about this is a credit to all involved.


...and we all appreciate that!!

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The chorus intrigued me! I love, love, love that triple rhyme in line 3 (strung it out/hung it out) and then paralleled using two syllables in line 6 ([un]fair to/there to). This is sophisticated lyric writing by every measure (no pun intended).


Thanks! those type "songwriting tools" have always played a big role for me... internal rhymes, quick short rhyme lines, alliteration (especially). Anything like that that you use often eventually become "second nature"....you do it without really thinking about it.


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That’s when I thought I’d better analyse your chorus. As you know, you’ve been inspirational for me when it comes to lyrics and it’s been a while since I’ve seriously analysed any of your work. I’ve discovered that if I want to enhance my own writing ability, I need to understand how it’s done by competent people such as yourself.

So let’s go...

I’ve colour-coded the rhymes and I’ve looked at the rhyme scheme and the poetic meter (that is, the number of stressed syllables in a line). And putting everything together, I created the table below. Yellow and green end-of-line rhymes are used to separate the first section from the second section with it's gray and blue end-of-line rhymes.





This is what stands out to me at first glance…

► Lines 7 and 9 don’t rhyme but there is a strong connection of consonance through “s” and “m”. Also the “o” sound in “promised” is close to the “u” sound in “something”. So, while there’s not a strict rhyme between these two words, there is definitely some sonic paste that glues them together a bit.

► By and large, the lines scan as 3, 4 and 5 feet (strong syllables). Moreover, there is a kind of symmetry in how the meter flows (e.g. 4-4-5, 4-4-5, 4-3, 4-3). Then the last line stands all by itself—lonely—with just two strong/stressed syllables. This is a powerful way to isolate that last line and shine lots of sonic spotlights on it. It’s also the eleventh line and it interrupts the laid back flow of symmetrical lyrics. All this make it 100% perfect for the title!

► Moving from 4-4-5, 4-4-5 meter to 4-3, 4-3 meter brings some lyric acceleration. When I say the lyrics aloud, I can feel this. This makes the words give a feeling of speeding up as they head into the last line.

► It’s interesting that the chorus is also book-ended in that the first three words and the last three words are identical. Nice!

This is excellent material to understand and deconstructing it has been very valuable for me.

I didn’t stop with the above. But I shan’t bore you with adding what followed into this post. If you want to discover where I went next, after thinking about the above, it’s on the below pdf file.

Here’s the link…

Continued on this pdf (Link)...

All the best and thank you! I'm really, really grateful for all the guidance that your work has provided me over the years.

Noel


That is quite the extensive analysis!! As I said above, I don't really "think about" a lot of this stuff as it happens...it "just happens". But that's because I've done it a lot - and for a long time - so most of those things just "fall into place" as I write. It is cool to see you break it down from your own perspective...

Thanks for taking the time to listen AND for the extensive write-up!!..


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