History Main / LyricalShoehorn

And her skin's the color mocha

* Music/TearsForFears' song "The Hurting" opens with the line "Is it an 'orrific dream" which should be "Is it a horrific dream?" but this would not fit in with the song". They can get away with it, being British. Note the line from Creator/MontyPython's "Eric the Half-a-Bee" where Creator/JohnCleese describes his pet fish Eric as "He's an 'alibut."

* "FRIENDS" by Marshmello and Anne-Marie is a SpellingSong, but the proper spelling of the word "friends" has one syllable too many for the rhythm of the chorus, so most of the time the lyrics seem to spell it "F-r-i-n-d-s". According to the official lyric video, it's "f-r-i-en-d-s", with "en" presumably meant to be pronounced like the letter "n".

* The children's praise song "The Wa Wa Song" has a particularly glaring one:

* ''WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog'' has wacky phrasing and rhyme scheme to fit the tempo of the song. Witness "Slipping", where the verse ends in the middle of a sentence and the continuing sentence starts the next verse.
-->Now that your savior
-->Is still as the grave, you're
-->Beginning to fear me

-->Like cavemen fear thunder
-->I still have to wonder
-->Can you really hear me?

* In a sort-of non-musical example, the poetry of Literature/{{Homer}} is full of these, at least if you accept the (generally accepted) theory of oral-formulaic composition. Anyone who reads Homer soon notices that certain words and passages crop up again and again: e.g., the sea is often described as 'wine-dark', dawn is 'rosy-fingered', and there's an entire chunk of lines in the ''Iliad'' describing how they cook and eat meat which just gets repeated whenever the guys want to have food. In the 1920s, classical scholar Milman Parry developed a theory to explain this, based in part on his field studies of oral poetry in the Balkan countries. The theory says that the poems attributed to Homer were originally composed as part of an oral tradition before they got written down -- in fact, they were sung -- and the singers often needed to come up with a word that would help a line to flow but would also fit the meaning. Some of these would take the form of entire 'type-scenes', which could be brought out to mark significant moments and which wouldn't vary much from character to character. Further scholars have extended this theory to the study of Literature/TheBible and Literature/TheQuran. Yes, when it's a showdown between rhythm and meaning, rhythm wins.

* {{The Police}} song "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" fits this trope, for obvious reasons. ("De do do do de da da da / Is all I want to say to you")

Elephants, boats'',[[note]]it doesn't help that a lot of singers run these two together, so it sounds like "elephant boats"[[/note]] ''and kiddie cars too''

* ''WeirdAlYankovic'' takes pride in these in his parody songs. Where the original song uses the same lyrics for every refrain (e.g. "[[Music/MichaelJackson beat it]] / beat it / noone wants to be defeated"), he puts effort into using a different rhyme word every time the refrain comes up (e.g. "get yourself an egg and beat it", "open up your mouth and feed it", "if it's getting cold, reheat it", and so forth). This includes finding half a dozen different rhymes for (the biggest ball of twine in) Minnesota...

*** Also by Train, "50 Ways to Say Goodbye" has the baffling line "how could you leave on [[UsefulNotes/JewishHolidays Yom Kippur]]?" It's there to ([[PainfulRhyme kinda]]) rhyme with "yours", but it makes one wonder [[SkewedPriorities on which holiday the speaker would have preferred to have his girlfriend break up with him.]]

* The theme song for ''Series/MurderMostHorrid'' has a line at the end which goes "and you wake in the night, wipe the sweat from your forehead (pronounced as forrid)/ [[TitleDrop Murder Most Horrid]]", and each episode has a different word substituted that rhymes with "horrid", such as torrid and borrowed (pronounced [[PainfulRhyme "borrid"]]). They seem to run out of words at one point, and the line becomes "and you wake in the night... la la la la la lorid". The fact that it's PlayedForLaughs eases the [[PainfulRhyme pain]].

* Music/{{Mew}}'s "Satellites" manages to do both this ''and'' a really PainfulRhyme:

* LFO's "Summer Girls" takes this to WordSaladLyrics extremes, throwing out {{Non Sequitur}}s every other line in order to rhyme with the previous one ([[PainfulRhyme and not always succeeding, infamously rhyming "sonnets" with "hornet"]].)

How come everybody want to keep it like the kaiser?\\

-->But many times
-->We're given rhymes
-->That are quite [[ItsPronouncedTropay unsing-able]]

** And "Kissable, Huggable" has "She's so beautiful, it's undisputable / It's undeniable, she's ''gottahaveable''". Writer Jeffrey Steele supposedly disliked this line.

* ''WeirdAlYankovic'' takes pride in these in his parody songs. Where the original song uses the same lyrics for every refrain (e.g. "[[MichaelJackson beat it]] / beat it / noone wants to be defeated"), he puts effort into using a different rhyme word every time the refrain comes up (e.g. "get yourself an egg and beat it", "open up your mouth and feed it", "if it's getting cold, reheat it", and so forth). This includes finding half a dozen different rhymes for (the biggest ball of twine in) Minnesota...

->''Slumming in at number two are songs that try to pass off "na nas," "la las," and "doot doos" as legit lyrics, as evidenced in [[FakeBand Limozeen]]'s bizarrely-titled "Feed the Childrens".''
-->--'''Strong Bad's [[Recap/StrongBadEmailE133Bottom10 bottom 10]]''', ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner''

* "FRIENDS" by Marshmello and Anne-Marie is a SpellingSong, but the proper spelling of the word "friends" doesn't quite fit the rhythm of the chorus, so most of the time the lyrics seem to spell out "F-r-i-n-d-s". In the official lyric video it's "f-r-i-en-d-s", with "en" presumably meant to be pronounced like the letter "n".

* Music/TearsForFears' song "The Hurting" opens with the line "Is it an 'orrific dream" which should be "Is it a horrific dream?" but this would not fit in with the song".
** They can get away with it, being British. Note the line from Creator/MontyPython's "Eric the Half-a-Bee" where JohnCleese describes his pet fish Eric as "He's an 'alibut."

* Collin Raye's "On the Verge" uses the phrase "slow down me" to rhyme with "around me."

** Max Martin was a co-producer on Music/ArianaGrande and Zedd's "Break Free", which contains the grammatically incorrect lyric "now that I've become who I really are", as well as the just plain nonsensical "I only wanna die alive". As with the Backstreet Boys example, Ariana initially objected to singing those words, but Max convinced her otherwise.

* ''WeirdAlYankovic'' takes pride in these in his parody songs. Where the original song uses the same lyrics for every refrain (e.g. "[[MichaelJackson beat it]] / beat it / noone wants to be defeated"), he puts effort into using a different rhyme word every time the refrain comes up (e.g. "get yourself an egg and beat it", "take it to your mouth and feed it", "if it's getting cold, reheat it", and so forth). This includes finding half a dozen different rhymes for (the biggest ball of twine in) Minnesota...

** They can get away with it, being British. Note the line from MontyPython's "Eric the Half-a-Bee" where JohnCleese describes his pet fish Eric as "He's an 'alibut."

** Max Martin was a co-producer on Music/ArianaGrande and Zedd's "Break Free", which contains the grammatically incorrect lyric "now that I've become who I really are", as well as the just plain nonsensical "I only wanna die alive". As with the Backstreet Boys example, Ariana initially objected to singing those words, but was convinced otherwise.