Writing Your Own Parodies II: Rhyme

Note: I am an engineer (software engineer, specifically). Like most programmers I'm much better with computer programming languages rather than natural languages (like English). I've not had one minute of creative writing in my lifetime and the two quarters I spent in English 1A/B in college were wasted figuring out how to pass the class with the minimum amount of work. Essentially, I'm admitting that I'm probably not the best person to be writing this essay. Most of the information from this essay comes from "The Complete Rhyming Dictionary" edited by Clement Wood and revised by Ronald Bogus (ISBN 0-440-21205), a book I highly recommend to anyone contemplating the creation of Parodeities. About the only defense I can make for why you should read this when I'm so technically unqualified to write it is because somebody had to write it. Note, by the way, that since my college days I have managed to get a couple of books published, so my writing skills have improved a tiny bit even if I've never really learned the art of writing poetry.

Writing lyrics for songs is just a special case of writing poetry. Therefore, to write decent parodies you should learn a little bit about writing poetry. This essay discusses rhyme in poetry and its impact on your lyrics.

Rhyme is the attribute of words whose vowel endings sound alike. The Complete Rhyming Dictionary defines it thusly:

Rhyme is the identity in sound of an accented vowel in a word, usually the last one accented, and of all consonantal and vowel sounds following it; with a difference in the sound of the consonant immediately preceding the accented vowel.

Notice that rhymes are based on sounds, not spelling. Words that are spelled alike but do not sound alike are not rhymes, e.g., bare vs. are. Conversely, words do not have to have identical spellings to rhyme, e.g., ate and bait. Words don't almost rhyme. They either rhyme or they don't. Words like game and rain do not rhyme even though they sound very similar. Identities do not rhyme, even if they are spelled differently. For example, there and their are identities, not rhymes.

Purists will immediately brand any poet as mediocre if they don't use correct rhymes. This means that 90% of the lyricists out there are exceeding mediocre poets, at best. As you'll read in a later in this essay, this creates a bit of a conundrum for the parodist. Good parodists attempt to maintain the rhyming scheme of the original song as much as possible (even when the rhymes are broken). Fortunately, gaffes in the original lyrics such as using assonance (i.e., words that sound alike, such as game and rain) or using identities (e.g., we're and were) are things you can probably fix in your parodies' rhymes without attracting too much unwanted attention. Likewise, a parodist can easily get away with using words that exactly rhyme with the original lyricist's choice even if the original lyrics don't rhyme. However, a parodist should avoid taking words that rhyme well in the original lyrics and replacing them by words that don't rhyme in the parody. A parodist can argue that they are working under severe restrictions that the original poet did not have, and this is a valid argument for breaking a few rhymes by using assonance or identities now and then. Poet purists may vehemently disagree with this statement, but parodists often have some severe constraints put on their word choices (based on the original lyrics) and sometimes the value of the parody is greater if you break a few rules. However, the important thing to know is that you actually are breaking rules rather than doing it out of complete ignorance.

Good poetry obeys the rules of proper English. One does not sacrifice grammar, pronunciation, etc., for the benefit of creating a poem. Poets with bad grammar or who require unnatural pronunciations in their only think they are poets. Truly great parodists achieve this; good parodists strive for this, but parodists can rarely achieve this in all their work (particularly if they produce any volume of work). Again there is the constraint that the original lyrics put on the parodist, plus the fact that the parodist is trying to tell a completely different story while all this is going on. Combined with mistakes that may appear in the original lyrics, a parodist is often backed into a corner and often the only way out is to use awkward English to save the day. Likewise, an unnatural pronunciation of some word can come to the rescue and a performing parodist can get away with this since they have control over the pronunciation when they perform the parody (note, however, that if you simply provide the parody in text format for people to read, you can't take advantage of this). Two examples of this taken to the extreme are ApologetiX performances of La Bible and Rock and Roots. The names of the books in the Bible do not rhyme well enough to form a poem. Likewise, Jesus Christ's ancestors' names don't rhyme. Still, J Jackson managed to pull off these two songs that go through the books of the Bible and Christ's genealogy and the result was amazing. There were some obvious problems, but the fact that ApologetiX could pull this off at all was amazing in and of itself.

Types of Parodeities

We can classify Parodeities according to how well the parody lyrics rhyme with the original tune and other quality metrics.

Christianized Lyrics

At one end of the scale we have "Christianized Lyrics" for secular songs. A Christianized version of a song changes just enough lyrics in an existing song to give it religious overtones. Changing the Beatles' lyrics for "She Loves You" to "He Loves You". A typical set of Christianized lyrics will change just enough words to give a consistent Christian message while maintaining as many of the original lyrics as possible. There is certainly an art to creating Christianized lyrics (knowing which words are important to change and, more importantly, which words to leave alone), but such work rarely a parody; most courts of law would claim that it's just a derivative work. If you're at all concerned about the legalities and ethics of doing parodies, you should probably avoid the Christianization route unless you get explicit permission from the original songwriter to use their work. I have gotten emails from some people who've posted some Christianized lyrics that have gotten nasty letters from music publishing houses demanding that they not publish or perform the material. From a legal and ethical point of view, I would suggest that you avoid creating such "parodies". For an example of such a "parody" check out Every Breath You Take on the Parodeities page here on Webster. From a poetic point of view, Christianized lyrics have the best chance of being good poetry (assuming, of course, that the original lyrics were decent). By making only the minimal number of changes to existing lyrics, it's much easier to keep the existing rhyming scheme and tell a coherent story. However, from an "artist development" point of view, few people have a tremendous amount of respect for those who simply produce Christianized lyrics. Indeed, much of the complaints people have about Parodeities in general are based on some Christianized songs they've heard in the past (and have no respect for).

Parodeities that Maintain the Meter and Rhyming Scheme

True parodies begin when you write a completely original set of lyrics for an existing song. As noted in the first essay of this series (see Writing Your Own Parodies I: Rhythm) the most important feature of the original song that a parody must preserve is the rhythm. They rhyming scheme, however, closely follows in importance. That is, wherever two words (intentionally) rhyme in the original lyrics, you must be sure that the words you choose to replace them also rhyme with each other. At this level, the words you choose don't have to rhyme with the words from the original lyrics, though it's better if they do (as you will soon see). Parodies at this level are, perhaps, the easiest to write, having the fewest constraints and restrictions placed upon the words you use. This type of Parodeity is the best to use if you need to tell an important story and keep it coherent. This type of Parodeity is the most common you'll find.

Parodeities that Maintain the Rhymes from the Original Lyrics

The next step up in difficulty when writing Parodeities is to maintain the same rhymes as the original lyrics. This means that when two words in the original lyrics (intentionally) rhyme, your replacement words must not only rhyme with each other, but they should rhyme with the words in the original lyrics as well. This introduces some constraints on the words you can choose for your parody and dramatically increases the difficulty of writing a coherent parody.

At this level you begin to leave the average person behind. Oh, they may realize that the parody is better (than one from the previous Parodeities level) but they probably won't be able to explain why they feel it's better. A good analogy is a shoe shine. A typical shoe shine involves polishing all the leather that covers the top of the shoe. This corresponds to the first level of Parodeity design. Someone who is anal retentive will also clean and dye the sole of the shoe. The average person might (subconsciously) notice the difference while someone was walking (and, thus, lifting their feet so that the soles briefly show) but they wouldn't be able to quite put their finger on what the difference is.

Some parodists don't feel that this extra effort is worth it; particularly if it affects their ability to tell a story cleanly without a lot of hackneyed English. However, this attention to detail is what separates the average person who thinks there's not much talent needed to write a parody and the person that truly appreciates what writing Parodeities is all about. Parodeities that maintain the same rhymes as the original lyrics sound better than those parodies that use any convenient rhyme the parodist can dream up. Even if the average person can't quite explain the difference, even if they can't appreciate the extra work that has gone into creating the parody, they do recognize that there is a difference. Another useful analogy here is washing dinnerware. You can thrown the stuff into the dishwasher and let it wash, rinse, and dry the dinnerware itself; or you can pull it out after the wash/rinse cycle and hand dry it to make it less dull and eliminate the spots. The average person probably would notice a slight difference but wouldn't appreciate the extra work needed to achieve that difference.

If you want to impress other parodists, however, maintaining the same rhymes as the original lyrics is where you should start when creating your Parodeities. Yes, it's much more difficult to write your parodies this way; but it's an art form and one that you can get really good at with a little practice. While maintaining the original rhymes may seem like an unnecessary constraint, the result is a higher form of art. "Working within the medium" is what art is all about. For example, you could chose to draw images with watercolors or with charcoal. Obviously, it's much easier to produce a nice image with watercolors than it is to do the same with charcoal; that makes it all the more impressive when someone produces a good charcoal image. The same is true for parodies. It's much more difficult to produce a coherent Parodeity when keeping the rhymes from the original lyrics intact; but it's also much more impressive when you do so.

Rhyming More Than Just the Phrase Ending

The next step up in complexity is to try and get as many words as possible in your parody to rhyme (or, at least, sound similar) with their corresponding words in the original lyrics. This does not mean that you introduce more rhymes into your lyrics. The number of rhymes should always be the same as occurs in the original song (subject, of course, to your correcting some non-rhymes appearing in the original lyrics). By rhyming more of your words with the words in the original lyrics, your song sounds more like the original song and people will really notice this. This is a bit more work than simply maintaining the original rhymes in the song, but it's not that much more difficult, either. True, this puts more constraints on the lyrics you can choose (since it limits the words you can select), but it doesn't require a tremendous amount of effort because you get to choose the words you want to make rhyme and the words that you can't get to rhyme. Consider the following line from the Science Fiction song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack:

Michael Rennie was ill

Now consider the corresponding line in the Parodeity Why It's Fiction:

My call it what you will

The words "will" and "ill" rhyme (well, actually, they're identities, but that works fine here even if it doesn't work in poetry) so this Parodeity achieves the second level on that basis. It's also the case that "My call" and "Michael" rhyme (or, at least, sound very similar; indeed, this is a near homonym, which is a real good thing). Note however, that "Rennie was" does not rhyme at all with "it what you." The likelihood that you could get every word in your parody to rhyme with the corresponding words or phrases in the original code is very low (at least, when maintaining a coherent story). The better (or luckier) you are, the more words you'll get to rhyme with the original lyrics. But don't expect to be able to get them all to rhyme; that's a near impossibility.

Introducing additional words into your lyrics that rhyme with the original lyrics isn't all that difficult and the payoff is rather good. The more you make your lyrics sound like the original lyrics, the more the average person will be impressed by your parody. So rising to this level on the Parodeity scale is probably a good idea since it requires only a little more effort than maintaining the rhymes at the end of each line in the original lyrics.

Homonyms

Using homonyms and near-homonyms (that is, using words and phrases in your lyrics that sound identical or very similar to the original lyrics yet are different and have different meaning) is the apogee of parody writing. It's also the most difficult level to achieve. But my experience suggests that this level is the one that most impresses everyone (the average person and parodists alike). People who make comments like "that's cool" when listening to an average parody will bust out laughing when they hear one that makes effective using of homonyms – even if the meaning of the underlying lyrics is deadly serious. Homonyms and near-homonyms have a very powerful impact on the listener (and I do emphasize listener, not reader, since reading the lyrics doesn't have quite the impact as hearing them sung) that is otherwise difficult to achieve. Of course, this comes at a price – using homonyms restricts the available words you can use to write your parodies and makes writing the parody that much harder. Still, your effort will be rewarded when people listen (and sometimes read) to the lyrics.

As an example of the power of homonyms and near-homonyms, consider the Three Door's Down song Kryptonite. Is has the following line in the chorus:

It's like kryptonite

J Jackson employed the following homonym to this line:

It's like Christmas nite

In one of the rare instances where I've felt I've done a better job than J, I wrote the following line for my own parody:

In your crypt tonight

(actually, I'm rather proud of that line; it gets a chuckle every time someone listens to a recording of the song). As another example, consider the following line from Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla:

History shows us again and again

And the corresponding line from God's Filled Ya:

His story tell it again and again

Of course, the identity "again and again" isn't that impressive, but the "History" = "His story" is fairly cute.

Like an attempt to get every corresponding word to rhyme in a parody, employing a lot of homonyms is difficult. However, the more the merrier. And few things have as big an impact on the listener as a good set of homonyms.