History Main / PainfulRhyme

** Occurs several times in the song "Yakko's World", including throwing in an incongruous "Asia" to form a rhyme with "Malaysia". Luckily it's so fast-paced and catchy that it's easy not to notice.

* The ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' video ''King George and the Ducky'' has King George sing a rant that rhymes "longer," "stronger," and "wronger." King George's page tries to remind him to [[GrammarNazi say "more wrong," instead]]. The king insists, "[[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem It had to rhyme! Don't question a king's grammar!]]"

* '''eye rhyme''': words that look like they should rhyme perfectly, but don't (done/bone/gone, sword/word)

* '''eye rhyme''': words that look like they should rhyme perfectly, but don't (done/bone/gone, found/wound)

* Lampshaded in {{Alice Cooper}}'s School's Out.

* WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows said that the first verse of Music/FloRida's "Club Can't Handle Me" features "the worst succession of non-rhymes I've heard since the second verse of Music/{{Steve Miller|Band}}'s 'Take the Money and Run'":

-->-- '''WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows''', on rhyming "unapproachable" in Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow"[[note]]For the record: Khalifa [[TakeAThirdOption didn't even try to rhyme it with anything]].[[/note]]

A MusicTrope (or, in some cases, a PoetryTrope). It's when you hear a rhyme in a song, or read it in a poem, and you're compelled to cringe at how painfully it's forced in. Maybe the sentence was rearranged into grammatical nonsense to accommodate it, or the rhythm was broken, or maybe it verges on nonsensical. Maybe words had to be intentionally mispronounced to make it rhyme, or an unlikely metaphor invented. In any case, they were really better off not bothering to make it rhyme. Bonus points if it doesn't even quite rhyme, or if they're [[RhymingWithItself just repeating rather than rhyming.]] It's common for amateur poets to do this, since they often rigidly adhere to an "ABAB" rhyme scheme, [[YodaSpeak forcing them to twist their verse into grotesque contortions]]. It doesn't seem to occur to them that there may be other rhyme schemes or that poems don't have to rhyme at all.

* The ''Series/StarWars'' game for {{UsefulNotes/Kinect}} features parodies of many popular dance songs, one of which is a recruitment song for the Empire based on "[[Music/VillagePeople YMCA]]". "It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A!" becomes "It's great to be in the Em-pire to-day!" The song includes the line "Vader [beat] can't do it by himself, and he's second [beat] to the Emperor himself!". Mind you, the corresponding line in the original song is "No man [beat] does it all by himself, I said young man! [beat] Put your pride on the shelf!", which isn't a total cheat, but is still contrived since we'd usually say "swallow your pride".

A MusicTrope. It's when you hear a rhyme in a song, or read it in a poem, and you're compelled to cringe at how painfully it's forced in. Maybe the sentence was rearranged into grammatical nonsense to accommodate it, or the rhythm was broken, or maybe it verges on nonsensical. Maybe words had to be intentionally mispronounced to make it rhyme, or an unlikely metaphor invented. In any case, they were really better off not bothering to make it rhyme. Bonus points if it doesn't even quite rhyme, or if they're [[RhymingWithItself just repeating rather than rhyming.]] It's common for amateur poets to do this, since they often rigidly adhere to an "ABAB" rhyme scheme, [[YodaSpeak forcing them to twist their verse into grotesque contortions]]. It doesn't seem to occur to them that there may be other rhyme schemes or that poems don't have to rhyme at all.

A common source of Painful Rhymes is the {{Stock Rhyme|s}}, such as girl/world, which is painful primarily because it's overused. An extreme case is the MidWordRhyme. Often a form of LyricalShoehorn.

* Even Music/TheBeatles were not immune to this. For example, in "I've Just Seen a Face", Music/PaulMcCartney attempts to rhyme "aware" and "her." (He also rhymes face/place, girl/world, falling/calling, day/way and sight/quite. All the lame rhymes in one bundle.) There are multiple covers by him, and he's attempted more than one method of trying to make the rhyme work... <sigh>

* Lampshaded in the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xvhn122ygc "Where Oh Werewolf"]]:
-->'''Mike:''' My mother and pop, they disapprove\\

** In the song "There's a Platypus Controlling Me," a kid randomly mentions that his teacher is a panda. When asked about the significance of this line, creator Dan Povenmire responded, [[BellisariosMaxim "It meant we were looking for a rhyme for 'propaganda'."]]

* ''Kinect Series/StarWars'' features parodies of many popular dance songs, one of which is a recruitment song for the Empire based on "[[Music/VillagePeople YMCA]]". "It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A!" becomes "It's great to be in the Em-pire to-day!" The song includes the line "Vader [beat] can't do it by himself, and he's second [beat] to the Emperor himself!". Mind you, the corresponding line in the original song is "No man [beat] does it all by himself, I said young man! [beat] Put your pride on the shelf!", which isn't a total cheat, but is still contrived since we'd usually say "swallow your pride".

* ''Kinect Series/StarWars'' features parodies of many popular dance songs, one of which is a recruitment song for the Empire based on "[[Music/VillagePeople YMCA]]". "It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A!" becomes "It's great to be in the Em-pire to-day!" The song includes the line "Vader [beat] can't do ''it-by-himself'', and he's second [beat] to the ''Em-peror-himself!''". Mind you, the corresponding line in the original song is "No man does it-all-by-himself, I said young man! Put your pride-on-the-shelf!", which isn't a total cheat, but is still contrived since we'd usually say "swallow your pride".

* ''Kinect Series/StarWars'' features parodies of many popular dance songs, one of which is a recruitment song for the Empire based on "[[Music/VillagePeople YMCA]]". "It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A!" becomes "It's great to be in the Em-pire to-day!" The song includes the line "Vader [beat] can't do ''it-by-himself'', and he's second [beat] to the ''Em-peror-himself!''". Mind you, the corresponding line in the original song is "No man does it all by himself, I said ''young man!'' Put your pride on the shelf!", which isn't a total cheat, but is still contrived since we'd usually say "swallow your pride".

* ''Kinect Series/StarWars'' features parodies of many popular dance songs, one of which is a recruitment song for the Empire based on "[[Music/VillagePeople YMCA]]". "It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A!" becomes "It's great to be in the Em-pire to-day!" The song includes the line "Vader can't do it by ''himself'', and he's second to the Emperor ''himself''". Mind you, the corresponding line in the original song is "No man does it all by himself, I said ''young man!'' Put your pride on the shelf!", which isn't a total cheat, but is still contrived since we'd usually say "swallow your pride".

* The debut episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'' features an alternate theme to that of ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}. When it gets to the final verse: