Dorothy Fields
Rhyming is using similar sounds among words. A song doesn’t have to rhyme, but it will help people remember your music — and your message. One-syllable rhymes are called “masculine” rhymes, such as “glad / sad” and “today / sleigh.” Notice that rhymes aren’t always spelled alike, but they do sound alike.
Multiple-syllable rhymes are called “feminine” rhymes, such as “denying / sighing” and “jealous / tell us.” Notice here that it’s the sounds, not the number of words, that’s important. When a rhyme is made of more than one word, like “tell us,” it’s also called a “mosaic” rhyme.
W.S. Gilbert was a master of mosaic rhymes, such as “lot o’ news / hypotenuse” in “Modern Major-General” from Pirates of Penzance. His influence can be seen in lyricists from Lorenz Hart to Yip Harburg to Lin-Manuel Miranda, who rhymes “medicine / debt is in” in “Cabinet Battle #1” from Hamilton.
The examples above are all “true” (or perfect) rhymes. The final sounds of the rhymes (the consonant and the vowel sounds) match exactly. True rhymes are most common in theater songs.
In “false” (imperfect, near, slant) rhymes, only the sounds of the vowels or the consonants match. These are most common in pop songs. “Assonance” is when only the vowel sounds match, such as “together / forever” and “home / alone,” and “consonance” is when only the consonant sounds match, such as “wrong / young” and “buddy / body.”
Where should you rhyme? Most rhymes happen at the end of phrases, but some happen in the middle. “End” rhymes reinforce your message by highlighting important words, such as Miranda’s “Will they know what you overcame? / Will they know you rewrote the game?” in “Alexander Hamilton” from Hamilton and Stephen Schwartz’s “I really hope you get it / And you don’t live to regret it” in “Defying Gravity” from Wicked.
“Internal” rhymes are surprises that perk up the ear and add a bit of energy to a song, such as Cole Porter’s “Flying so high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do” in “I Get a Kick Out of You” from Anything Goes (with five internal rhymes) and Shaiman and Wittman’s “You can’t stop the motion of the ocean or the sun in the sky” in “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from Hairspray (with one internal rhyme).
Of course, you don’t have to rhyme every line to make a song memorable. Other types of wordplay can make your lyrics interesting. “Onomatopoeia” is playing with word sounds, such as Ralph Blane’s “Ding, ding, ding went the bell” in “The Trolley Song” from Meet Me in St. Louis, while “portmanteau” is playing with word blends, such as “frenemy” and “ginormous,” and “pun” is playing with word meanings, such as “What’s so good about goodbye.” A final type of common wordplay is comparison. “Similes” are comparisons that use the words “like” or “as,” such as “You’re as cold as ice,” while “metaphors” are comparisons that don’t, such as “My heart melted.”
As you write lyrics, remember the advice of Dorothy Fields: “Don’t fall in love with what you believe is a clever rhyme. … Think about what you want to say and then look for the most amusing or graceful way you can say it.”
If you need help on rhyme, browse Clement Wood’s Rhyming Dictionary, which Stephen Sondheim recommends.
Next, organizing your rhymes