X = two half-beats

Example 1 X X X X X X X X

Last night I said these words to my girl

Example 2 X X X X X X X X

Come on! (Come on!) Come on! (Come on!) Come on! (Come on!) Come on! (Come on!)

Example 3 X X X X X X X X

I don’t want to sound complaining but you know there’s always rain in my heart (in my heart)
Figure 3.1: Beatles: ‘Please Please Me’ (opening)
 from lyric to anti-lyric: analyzing the words in pop song

Allan F. Moore, Rock: the Primary Text (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993), p. 176.

1 = per bar

I don’t want to kiss you, I don’t want to touch,

|2 |2

I don’t want to see you ’cos I don’t miss you that much I’m not a telephone
|2 |2.5

junkie I told you that we were just good friends

|2 |1.5 |2

But when I hold you like I hold that bakelite in my hands There’s no
|2.5 |2

action (etc.)
|4 (etc.)

(b)

1 = per beat

I don’t want to kiss you, I don’t want to touch

4 4 4 4

I don’t want to see you ’cos I don’t miss you that much. I’m not a
4 4 4 4

telephone junkie I
2 8

told you that we were just good

4 2

friends but when I

8

hold you like I hold that bakelite in my

4 4 2

hands there’s no
8

action (etc.)
8 (etc.)

Figure 3.3: Elvis Costello: ‘No Action’

49
 from lyric to anti-lyric: analyzing the words in pop song
Table 3.1 Comparison of rhymes in two songs

Elvis Costello: ‘Beyond Belief ’ Rickie Lee Jones: ‘Living it Up’

N(pl)/N(pl) conceits/defeats N/adv crazy eye/pretty girl goes by

N(pl)/N(pl) issues/tissues
N/N slick/nervous tick
N/N hovel . . . novel
Vpp/N tortured/orchard
N/Np palace/Alice
N/adv jealousy/sweetly
N/adj malice/callous
V/N fit/identikit
N/N fault/vault
N/N barrier reef/belief
adv/adv completely/discreetly
adj/adj cunning/stunning
Np/N(pl) Hades/ladies
V/N wolf-whistle/thistle
adv/prep nothin here to do anymore/something he’s
waiting for
N/Np picks up Eddie in the alley/they all look like Frankie
Valli
N/adv her leg to her cigarette/he ain’t come back here yet
adv/adv lost her job again/won’t let her in
N/V blue dress/lemme guess
adv/V then and there/they didn’t care
adv/Vpp dreams let so many tickets through/somebody
there they knew
adj/adj lights are blooming green/sad, a little mean
N/V hotel/you couldn’t tell

N: noun, pl: plural; Np: proper noun; V: verb; pp: past participle; adj: adjective; adv:
adverb; prep: preposition.

the terms which matter in pop songs. One factor both these songs suggest
is the collision of what Paul Simon calls ordinary and enriched language
(Zollo 1997: 109), Costello’s rhyme of ‘ladies’ with ‘Hades’ or ‘alley’ with
‘Frankie Valli’ in Rickie Lee Jones. A method, derived from Wimsatt, albeit
in an adapted form, would at least offer a basis for taxonomic work.22
Alongside rhyme, and sometimes in opposition to it, alliterations can
figure as a word-technique driven by sound. Mark E. Smith of The Fall
is a great exponent here. ‘Well, I didn’t make the weekend’, begins the ‘Lie
Dream of a Casino Soul’, ‘but I put the weight back on again’. ‘Make/weekend’
moves along its ‘k’ sound – Smith has extraordinary ways of emphasizing and
elongating his consonants – and ‘weight back on again’ stretches ‘weekend’
into a sort of wreck of its original wholeness: ‘weekend/way - k - n’. ‘And Our

22 Preminger and Brogan (1993: 1056, para 4) appears to suggest that detailed
taxonomic work is also lacking in the study of English poetry.

53