History Main / LyricalShoehorn

Uhh.

See also WordSaladLyrics, when the words don't even ''attempt'' to make sense (or occasionally, even be grammatical), and SingingSimlish, for songs that are just gibberish. LyricalTic is for particular shoehorns that become a certain artist's CatchPhrase.

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* The theme song for ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening'', "Devils Never Cry", has this line:

* Pick any Music/BrianEno song. He does this intentionally because he doesn't like writing lyrics and doesn't think that lyrics should be read as poetry.
** Or much of Music/TalkingHeads' output during his time as their producer. As a matter of fact, "I Zimbra" is based on an ''actual'' sound-poem, specifically one by UsefulNotes/{{Dada}}ist Hugo Ball.
* Those Fabulous Sixties!:
** Brenton Wood's "Oogum Boogum Song": "Oogum, boogum, boogum, boogum now baby, now cast your spell on me."
** Manfred Mann's "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy": "There she was, just a-walkin' down the street, singin' 'doo wah diddy, diddy dum, diddy do'".
** Bo Diddley by way of the Remains, "Diddy Wah Diddy": "She don't come from no town, she don't come from no city, she lives way down in Diddy Wah Diddy".
** The Chipmunks' "Witch Doctor": "Oo ee, oo ah ah, ting tang, walla walla bing bang..."
* ''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?
** Same is true for Captain Hammer's intro, "A Man's Gotta Do":
--->Stand back everyone, nothing here to see.
--->Just imminent danger; in the middle of it, me!
--->Yes, Captain Hammer's here, hair blowing in the breeze,
--->The day needs my saving expertise!

* Music/TomLehrer's "The Folk Song Army":
-->The tune don't have to be clever,
-->And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line.
-->It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
-->And it don't even gotta rhyme... (excuse me: rhyne!)
** Even more shoehorned is ''We Will All Go Together When We Go":
-->When you attend a funeral
-->Ain't it sad to think that sooner o' l-
-->Ater those you love will do the same for you
-->And you may have thought it tragic
-->Not to mention other adjec-
-->Tives to think of all the weeping they will do...
** Or his example of "Clementine" as it might sound if written by Creator/GilbertAndSullivan...
-->I love she and she loves me
-->Enraptured are the both of we
-->As I love she and she loves I
-->And will through all eternitye!
* "All I Want To Do" by Music/{{Sugarland}}. The word "do" is stretched quite egregiously over a very long melodic run.
* "Bop bop she bop" appears in Music/{{Rammstein}}'s ''Adios''
* Music/BillyJoel was prone to these. From "Tell Her About It":
--->Listen, boy, it's good information from a man who's made mistakes:
--->Just the word or two that she gets from you could ''be the difference that it makes''.
** In "Piano Man" he inverts the usual order of "gin and tonic" because "in" doesn't rhyme with "tonic".
* There's Music/CelineDion's "With This Tear" (written by Music/{{Prince}}):
-->''With this tear, I thee want''
-->''I long for you to talk me like you did that night in the restaurant.''
* Who could forget the memetic part of Ievan Polkka as performed by Loituma? Traditionally, that part is ad-libbed in random, interesting-sounding scatting.
* In the much-covered "Umbrella" by Music/{{Rihanna}} there's a lyric that goes "When the war has took its part..." Irritating, but "taken its part" wouldn't scan, so...
* Music/SouljaBoy, particularly adding his own name.
* "Land Of A Thousand Dances" opens up with one long strand of "na na"s.
** Speaking of "nah nahs," Train's "Drops of Jupiter" has a fair few of those as well as "yeahs/heys" at the end of some lines.
*** 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 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.]]
** My Chemical Romance actually named a song "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)". Its chorus is three lines of 16 "na"s each. (Side note that their song "Destroya" also contains sections that repeat "check check check" or "uh uh uh". In fact, most of the other lyrics fit this trope as well.)
** [[Music/TheBeatles "Hey Jude"]] is composed of about 3 minutes of regular song... and four minutes of "Nah nahs."
** Also speaking of "Na"s, Webcomic/{{xkcd}} gives you [[http://xkcd.com/851_make_it_better/ this.]]
** Music/OneDirection also seems to be incredibly fond of "na na"s.
* In Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs Dave calls out "Baby I'm-a Want You" by Bread. "Baby, I'm-a too lazy to write lyrics that scan, so I'm-a just add an extra 'a' whenever I'm-a need a syllable."
* Music/JimiHendrix: "And so castles made of sand fall/melts/slips in/into/into the sea, eventually."
* Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah": "Even more in love with me you'd fall", clearly phrased in that borderline nonsensical manner to both fit the meter and rhyme with "all".
* [[{{Memetic Mutation}} Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, BANANNA PHONE!]]
* "Hey Man Nice Shot" by Music/{{Filter}} gives us the immortal line "AAAA MAN/HAS GUN".

* Music/TheyMightBeGiants' song "Don't Let's Start":
-->"They want what they're not/and I wish they would stop/ saying: "Deputy dawg dog a ding dang depa depa, Deputy dawg dog a ding dang depa depa" '''D''': World Destruction/ '''O'''-ver an overture/'''N''': do I need/'''Apostrophe T''': need this torture?
** Linnell has stated that the music for Don't Let's Start was written before the lyrics, and the lyrics were mostly chosen because they fit the number of syllables for the melody. When asked about the song's meaning, Linnell simply answered that it was about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "not let's starting."]]
* Timbaland's "The Way I Are":
-->I ain't got no money. I ain't got no car to take you on a date.
** Parodied in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6RvmRPLvwA this YouTube video]], titled "Bad Grammar".
* Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" subverts this by having perfectly intelligible lyrics at some points, at the expense of rhythm.
-->''Oh 4,5,6''
-->''C'mon and get your kicks''
-->''Now you don't need money''
-->''When you look like that do ya honey?''
* "Running Through the Back Brain" (which is to be fair a comic song) written by Creator/MichaelMoorcock and performed by him with Hawkwind:
-->Killers on the street are wearing striped pants
-->They are interfering with my larynx
* There's an Oscar Meyer Lunchables Commercial:
--> Girl: WRAPZ are a taste you can't deny.
--> Boy: I know you're gonna love 'em just like I.
** The twist here is that the grammar is actually correct -- the boy's sentence ends with an unspoken "do".
* "Na Na Na Na Naa" is the name of a song by Music/KaiserChiefs, as well as a great deal of the lyric. It verges on being the band's LyricalTic.

* Similar to the Jets subversion above, VideoGame/StrongBadsCoolGameForAttractivePeople fits the words "unless you're a lady, then you're cordially invited to have a giant slice of my style" into a space of five seconds.
* Brendon Small's songs in ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Metalocalypse}}'' have "doodley-doo" in the lyrics, a lot.
--> [[ThemeTuneRollCall Skwissgaar Skwigelf]], taller than a tree\\
Toki Wartooth, [[CaptainObvious not a bumblebee]]\\
William [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Murderface, Murderface, Murderface]]\\
Pickles the drummer, [[SingingSimlish doodly-doo, ding-dong ding-dong doodly doo]]\\
Nathan Explosion!

* Vagiant's FTK, a {{Bowdlerization}} of one of their songs for ''Guitar Hero 2'', has to fall into this at one point to match a rhyming scheme and meter that was originally intended for more... colorful lyrics, inserting the bizarre nonsequitur "Take this car and fill it up with tons of gas".
* Harry Chapin's hit "Cat's in the Cradle": "It's been sure nice talking to you."
** From the same song: "What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys/ see you later, can I have them please?"

* Don't listen too closely to "World Without Logos" (the opening theme of ''Anime/{{Hellsing}} TV''). The lyrics are so full of this and GratuitousEnglish that it's practically scat-singing.
* Peter Schickele's annotations to the lyrics of Music/PDQBach's madrigal "My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth" [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial insist]] that the second line in this couplet is absolutely meaningless:
-->My bonnie lass liketh to dance a lot;\\
-->She's Guinevere and I'm Sir Lancelot.
** Of course, given the parodic nature of the AntiLoveSong as a whole, and given the illicit nature of Lancelot and Guinevere's affair...
* In the Music/StephenSondheim musical ''Merrily We Roll Along'', the main character is demoing one of his songs to a producer, and expresses his dissatisfaction with the line, "They're always popping their cork."
* "Do Re Mi" from ''Film/TheSoundOfMusic'' has the irritatingly shoehorned line, "La: a note to follow so." It's probably because there just isn't a good pun on "la."
** The line is the subject of a Creator/DouglasAdams essay, as he uses it as an example of "Unfinished Business of the 20th Century", things that really should be sorted out before the digits change. He even tries to repair it himself before conceding that perhaps it's not as easy a problem as it first appears.
* Cracker's "Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)" plays with this trope:
-->'Cause what the world needs now
-->Is some true words of wisdom
-->Like la la la la, la la, la la la
* The {{Music/Gorillaz}} song "Rockit" consists mostly of the word "blah." People have variously interpreted this as incredibly deep or incredibly lazy. WordOfGod is that it's about rock stars who pump out a few good albums and then start cranking out lazy shit (hence: "I'm walking to the something, blah blah blah blah blah", among other lines).
* Music/NineInchNails is usually better about this, but the beginning of "Terrible Lie" is somewhat cringe-worthy.
-->Why are you doing this to me
-->Am I not living up to what I'm supposed to be
-->Why am I seething with this animosity
-->I think you owe me a great big apology
** "Only" has the rather awkward "Yes I'm alone, but then again I always was", where "I've always been" would have sounded much better. But it needed to rhyme with "because", so...
** Furthermore, [[Music/TheFragile1999 "We're in This Together"]] and [[Music/TheFragile1999 "The Great Below"]] feature "down the path we have chose" and "the destiny I've chose". In both cases, "chosen" would be semantically correct, but also wouldn't scan.
* Music/{{Nickelback}} songs should only be listened to and never analyzed on paper for this very reason. The lyrics come off as a bit sing-songy and childish when they're just read through.
-->Kim's the first girl I ''kissed''
-->I was so nervous that I nearly ''missed''
-->She's had a couple of kids since ''then''
-->I haven't seen her since God knows ''when''
* Jules Shear's "If She Knew What She Wants". Grammatically, it should be "If She Knew What She Wanted", but that would really mess up the meter.
* An infamous example is Paul [=McCartney=]'s "My Love," whose lyrics are copiously padded with the syllable "wo."
* Almost anything written by John Rich. One particularly painful example is "New York City town" from "Shuttin' Detroit Down". Not to mention that he uses the [[StockRhyme town/down rhyme]] ''twice'' in the chorus.
* The Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice" somehow manages to use "mad as hell" twice in the chorus just because they couldn't think of another line.
* "She got it goin' on like Franchise/DonkeyKong" from Music/TraceAdkins' "[[TotallyRadical Honky Tonk Badonkadonk]]" (see also StuffyOldSongsAboutTheButtocks).
* Endemic in Music/Starflyer59's music. Jason Martin always writes the music first and the lyrics last, and he admits to padding songs with lyrics that sound good and mean nothing--and for the fans, it's usually impossible to tell the difference.

* "In The Garage" by Weezer has "garage" repeatedly pronounced as "grodge" to better fit the meter of the chorus[[note]] Though it's doubtful that this is what they were actually going for, "garage" ''is'' pronounced "grodge" in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yooper_dialect the Yooper dialect]][[/note]]. It works in a NarmCharm sort of way though.
* Bruce Springsteen has a bad habit of adding "mister" to lines when he needs a couple of extra syllables to fill out the meter.
** "Hungry Heart": "Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack" so he can rhyme it with "back".
* The Killers' "Human": In order to rhyme with "answer," the grammatically incorrect "Are we human or are we dancer?" was made the focal point of the chorus.
** There are times when such nouns are treated as adjectives (if you were asking about a group's nationality, both "Are they German?" and "Are they Germans?" would be accepted), so the lyrics are only asking us to start considering 'dancer' to be a biological classification mutually exclusive with 'human'.
*** Then again, they credit the line-as-written to Creator/HunterSThompson, so make of that what you will.
* Interpol's "Obstacle 1":
-->"Her stories are boring and stuff,
-->She's always calling my bluff"
** From the same band, "PDA":
-->Sleep tight, grim rite
-->We have two hundred couches where you can
-->Sleep tight, grim rite...
* Music/CollinRaye's "On the Verge" uses the phrase "slow down me" to rhyme with "around me."
* Aaron Tippin wants you to know that he's looking for his "blue-ahoo-ooh-ahoo-ooh" angel. It's [[{{Dissimile}} almost like a yodel, but not quite.]]
** He and [[WesternAnimation/AlvinAndTheChipmunks Simon]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQskyb727oE argue about the grammatically incorrect lyrics]] in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cdzt_8DbQg "There Ain't Nothin' Wrong with the Radio"]].
-->"She isn't a Cadillac, and she isn't a Rolls, but there isn't anything wrong with the radio."
-->"It's well, it's soundin' uh, real good, but replacing "ain't" with "isn't" ain't cuttin' it for me, pal.
* [[Music/DianaRoss Do you know where you're going to?]]
* The Chemical Brothers song "Let Forever Be" starts 85% of the lines by asking the listener the question "How does it feel like?" Fits the meter, but is a grammatical train wreck that just keeps going.
* A lot of The Protomen's lyrics look quite strange on paper, and it doesn't help that their lyric sheets are interspersed with things happening during the song that are not actually sung, resulting in instrumental songs with three paragraphs of "lyrics".
-->"Send your armies. There's no man or machine who can stop me, and you'll soon see.
-->I come for vengeance for the first Son of Light. I'm ready, I'm willing, I'm prepared to--"
** It should be noted that that particular part is interrupted, and the closing word is 'fight'.
* "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" with its mentions of "marshmallows for toasting" and "scary ghost stories," which are about as far from Christmas imagery as you can get (you could count ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' but that's a stretch). There's also a mention of "gay happy meetings", which is of course a bit redundant.
** Possibly an example of something becoming this over time. There are traditions of telling ghost stories at Christmas, as seen [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Ghost_Story_for_Christmas here]] for example.
* The chorus of Everclear's "I Will Buy You A New Life" includes the line "I will buy you a new car, perfect shiny [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment and new]]". The second "new" ''does'' need to be there to slant rhyme with "bloom", but plenty of other one syllable adjectives could have come before "car" while still fitting the meter.
* "Concrete jungle where dreams are made of" in Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State Of Mind", though "Concrete jungle ''that'' dreams are made of" would have made more sense and still fit in.
* Music/TheResidents album "Duck Stab" was built entirely around this concept often with unusual results...
-->A red, red rose saw a big pig pose
-->On the edge of a silver dollar
-->The end of his tail was a long-necked nail
-->And in place of his face was the scholar
* King Crimson's song "Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With" is an intentional stab at this trope, with such lyrics as:
-->And when I have some words
-->This is the way I'll sing
-->Through a distortion box
-->To make them menacing.
-->Yeah, then I'm gonna have to write a chorus
-->We're gonna need to have a chorus
-->And this seems to be as good as any other place
-->To sing until I'm blue in the face.
* Akon's "Dangerous" has the first line "I can't notice but to notice you, noticing me."
* In the chorus of "Disturbia," Rihanna informs us that the titular state of mind "ain't used to what you like." That should probably be the other way around, in order to make any sense at all.
** Probably intentional, considering what the song is about.
* Music/FrouFrou has a song, ''Flicks'', which is basically this trope.
* Music/TheCranberries do this sometimes, for instance:
--> People are strangers
--> People in danger
--> People are strangers
--> People deranged are
---> ''Loud And Clear''
* Music/CarrieUnderwood's "Undo It" has a couple, most notably "you stole my happy" (which one reviewer said made the song sound like she was singing in [[WebOriginal/LOLCats LOLcat speak]]) and "uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-undo it."
* "Mack the Knife," as it appears in the Marc Blitzstein translation of ''Theatre/TheThreepennyOpera'', has about every other line ending with a gratuitous "dear". It should be observed that some of the most famous covers of the song use Blitzstein's English version of the lyrics but with that word changed.
* Canadian band Big Wreck may have the worst example of all with ''"That Song"''- they ''changed the pronounciation of a word'' to make it fit better into the song! "Dumb" becomes ''"doom"'', simply so that it will rhyme with "room". Seriously, could no other word have been used there?:
--> and it might sound ''doom'',
--> so just leave the ''room''
** On the plus side, though, it does sound very "''doom''," so it works in that regard.

* Paula Cole's "I Don't Want To Wait":

* Music/RascalFlatts's "Feels Like Today" has "The last sacred blessing and, ''hey'' / Feels like today." Really? That was the best rhyme the writers could come up with?
* Music/FaithHill's "The Way You Love Me" features a completely avoidable pronoun flub:
-->''If I could grant you one wish''
-->''I wish you could see the way you kiss.''
** So she'll grant him a wish, but she gets to pick it. Yeah, [[SarcasmMode that makes sense]]. And the next lines are hardly any better:
--->''Ooh, I love watching you, ooh, baby''
--->''When you're drivin' me, ooh, [[StockRhyme crazy]]''
--->''Ooh, I love the way you, love the way you love me…''
* "Twenty years have came and went" from "Angry All the Time" by Music/TimMcGraw. "Have come and gone" ''would'' have scanned, you know.
** From another one of Tim's songs, "My Old Friend": "They laugh and they cry me / And somehow sanctify me". Verbs do not work that way.
** "8.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu" from "Live Like You Were Dying" sticks out as a particularly specific line in an otherwise fairly broad-strokes song.
* Andy Partridge admitted he was forced to butcher the line "Please don't pull me out/I'm relax in the undertow" in Music/{{XTC}}'s "Summer's Cauldron" simply because that extra syllable from the correct grammar would screw up the meter.
* Music/VanHalen's "Why Can't This Be Love?": "Only time will tell if we [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment stand the test of time]]".
* Music/BobDylan does this a lot, most famously adding the word "babe" at the end of lines. Other examples from his early work: "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (rhyming "knowed" with "road"); "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" ("there's beauty in the sunrise in the sky"--where else would the sunrise be?)
** "If it works, why not?" is perhaps the closest Bob has to a philosophy. Consider--in these stanzas from "Motorpsycho Nitemare"--the elegant division of lines:
-->Rita mumbled something
-->'Bout her mother on the hill
-->As his fist hit the icebox
-->He said he's going to ''kill''
-->'''Me''' if I don't get out of the door
-->In two seconds flat
-->"You unpatriotic
-->[[ItMakesSenseInContext Rotten doctor commie rat]]"
** Dylan also loves squeezing ''way'' too many syllables into a line. "Summer Days", for instance, has a standard AAB blues pattern, where he somehow manages to sing
-->She looks into my eyes, she's a-holdin' my hand
-->She looks into my eyes, she's a-holdin' my hand
-->She says "You can't repeat the past." I say "You can't? What do you mean you can't? ''Of course'' you can!"
* The third verse of Music/AlanJackson's "Where I Come From" is a PainfulRhyme-riddled mess of a word salad. Good luck trying to figure out what he's even trying to say:
-->I was chasin' sun on 101
-->Somewhere around Ventura
-->I lost a universal joint
-->And I had to use my finger[[note]]presumably supposed to mean that he dialed a phone to get help?[[/note]]
-->This tall lady stopped and asked
-->If I had plans for dinner
-->Said, "No thanks, ma'am, back home
-->We like the girls that sing soprano"
* John Conlee's "Old School" has a rather shoehorned word: "We both made it to our graduation / You chose a college, I chose a ''vocation'' / Driving 18 wheels."
* "That's Enough of That" by country singer Mila Mason: "That's enough of this crying, enough of this whining, enough of this ''over-react'' / That's enough of this all-day, everyday, thinkin' maybe someday you're comin' back / That's enough of that".
* The large majority of the lyrics of Music/{{Yes}} are picked for sound over anything else. "Love Will Find A Way", though, has their most blatant and famous one:
-->''Here is my heart
--> Waiting for you
--> Here is my soul
--> [[ChezRestaurant I eat at Chez Nous]]''.
* The Music/SexPistols' "Anarchy in the UK" opens with the following couplet, with the second line mispronounced to rhyme with the first (''anarkaist''):
--> I am an antichrist
--> And I am an anarchist
** Johnny Rotten has gone on record saying that was the only part of the song he didn't like.
* Neil Diamond: "Songs that she sang to me, songs that she ''brang'' to me". Usually one would say "brought" instead.

* Done intentionally by Music/FrankZappa for "I Have Been In You," as it was an IKEAErotica parody of Music/PeterFrampton's "I'm In You":
-->"I have been in you, baby
-->And you
-->Have been in me
-->And we
-->Have be
-->So intimately
-->Entwined
-->And it sure was fine
-->I have been in you, baby
-->And you
-->Have been in me
-->And so you see
-->We
-->Have be so together
-->I thought that we would never
-->Return from forever
-->Return from forever
-->Return from forever..."
* Music/SteelyDan's "Soul Ram", where every line seems to have been written purely to give the song lyrics, making no sense at all. In particular, the line "Just pretends knows the score" which omits "she" twice in order to fit with the meter of the song.
* A substantial amount of {{Goth}} music fits this trope and WordSaladLyrics. Artists are divided between those who freely admit that they choose lyrics strictly for sound and cadence, and those who [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic insist that there is a deeper symbolism]], only [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech critics are too stupid or superficial to understand them]]. Andrew Eldritch of Sisters of Mercy, and Valor Kand of Christian Death are classic examples of the latter.
** Example of the former, Bauhaus' "In The Flat Field"
--->Yin and yang lumber punch\\
Go taste a tart, then eat my lunch\\
And force my slender thin and lean\\
In this solemn place of fill wetting dreams\\
Of black matted lace of pregnant cows\\
As life maps out onto my brow\\
The card is lowered in index turn\\
Into my filing cabinet hemispheres spurn.
* Edwin [=McCain=]'s "I'll Be" has "I'll be your crying shoulder". The usual expression is "a shoulder to cry on", but the line needed to end on a rhyme for "older". The listener might end up with the mental image of [[AmbiguousSyntax a shoulder that's crying, rather than a shoulder being used to cry on]].

* Steam's "Nah Nah, Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)", ends in an extended chorus of the refrain, "Na-na-na-nah, Na-na-na-nah, Hey-hey-hey, goodbye", because the band realized that the track was a bit short without it.
* Dave Barnes' "God Gave Me You" (CoveredUp by Music/BlakeShelton) has "That you, ''an angel lovely'', could somehow fall for me." This is particularly baffling, as the particular line could've been the much better-sounding "a lovely angel" since it's mid-line and doesn't have to rhyme with anything.
* Music/EdSheeran's "The A-Team" (a song about a woman addicted to drugs) has some seriously {{Painful Rhyme}}s because of this:
-->But lately
-->her face seems
-->Slowly sinking, wasting
-->Crumbling like [[AnalogyBackfire pastries]]
* Music/TheBeatles' "In My Life": "But of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you". It should probably be "...there is no one ''who'' compares with you", but that would throw off the meter a bit.
* Music/{{REM}}:
** Played for laughs in "Voice of Harold", which consists of Michael Stipe singing out the liner notes to a gospel album to the tune of [[Music/{{Reckoning}} "7 Chinese Bros."]] Many parts of the writing inevitably don't fit the meter of the song, resulting in him frequently having to either drag out, rush through, or add pauses in the middle of some of the words.
** The chorus of [[Music/AroundTheSun "Leaving New York"]] has the grammatically odd line "leaving was never my proud" (probably meaning "pride", but that wouldn't slant-rhyme with "around" and "down"). Like the Carrie Underwood example, it can be read as being in [[WebOriginal/LOLCats LOLCat]] speak.
* Music/RebaMcEntire's "You're Gonna Be" contains a particularly Yoda-esque lyric:
-->Life has no guarantees
-->But always loved by me
-->You're gonna be

* Krispy Kreme's "The Baddest" has "I have four hundred houses / I have four hundred mouses and four hundred houses". It's not just the improper plural of "mouse", but also the fact that mice themselves are an unlikely thing to brag about having in a BoastfulRap unless you just really need something that rhymes with "house". Though it's possible he means ''computer'' mouses - "mouses" is considered an acceptable plural in that context, and it'd be a slightly more logical thing to brag about than having a rodent problem.
* Music/TaylorSwift's "Fearless": "And I don't know why, but ''with you I'd dance'' / In a storm in my best dress, fearless". Also, about half the song has very odd line breaks and a bad case of AccentOnTheWrongSyllable.
* The first verse of "Dear Mr. Governor" by Music/DaYoopers starts off fine, but totally derails on the last line:
-->"What's this on my mitten?" said the troll from down below[[note]]"Troll" in this case meaning a resident of UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}}'s Lower Peninsula, as they are "under" the Mackinac Bridge, which connects the state's Lower Peninsula with its Upper Peninsula.[[/note]]
-->"Is it just a picker, or a piece of dirty snow?
-->I think I'll just brush it off and kick it in the lake
-->And stay down below the bridge ''and eat my birthday cake''"
* The song "Knights of the Round Table" from ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'' is composed entirely of this trope, to the point that it includes the Lampshade:
-->But many times\\
We're given rhymes\\
That are quite unsing-able
* Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown has this as a SignatureStyle. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hypEfsEyyZ0 Even when he writes in English.]]
* The Music/QueensOfTheStoneAge song "Turnin' On The Screw" has this rather cringe-worthy line:
-->You want a reason? How's about because
-->You ain't a "has been" if you never was
* "Give it Away" by Music/RedHotChiliPeppers has quite a few lines that are puzzling at best and groan-inducing at worst. For example:
-->Confide with sly you'll be the wiser\\
Young blood is the loving [[PerfectlyCromulentWord upriser]]\\
How come everybody want to keep it like the kaiser?
** "All Around the World" at one point has the line "Ding dang dong dong ding dang dong dong ding dang" completely without any context or explanation whatsoever.

* {{Music/Maroon5}}'s "Payphone" has the line "Even the sun sets in paradise" - in context, this is clearly supposed to mean "Even in paradise, the sun sets", but that wouldn't fit into the meter or rhyme with "paralyzed".
* In the ''{{Film/Eegah}}'' song "Valerie", Arch Hall Jr. very clumsily tosses in the words "gallery", "calorie" and "salary" just so they can rhyme with the title.
* 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 "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 pain.
* In Music/TheBlackEyedPeas' song "Imma Be", in between repeating its title over and over again, had Will.i.am deliver the immortal line: "Imma be a brother, but my name ain't Lehmann; Imma be a bank, I be loaning out semen." No-one is quite sure why.
* The Music/SteveMillerBand's song "Take the Money and Run", does this for a set of [[LeastRhymableWord Least Rhymable Words]]:
-->''Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas''\\
''You know he knows just exactly what the facts is''\\
''He ain't gonna let those two escape justice''\\
''He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes''
* Music/{{Mew}}'s "Satellites" manages to do this:
--> ''I wanna breathe in a sunlight beam''\\
''I wanna be with a girl like she''
* The chorus of "Good Morning Starshine" from ''Theatre/{{Hair}}'':
-->Gliddy gloop gloopy\\
Nibby nobby nooby\\
La la la lo lo\\
Sabba sibby sabba\\
Nooby abba dabba\\
Le le lo lo\\
dooby ooby walla\\
dooby abba dabba\\
Early morning singing song
* From Music/{{Madonna}}'s "Don't Stop":
-->Get up on the dance floor\\
Everything is groovin'\\
Get up on the dance floor\\
Got to see you movin'\\
Let the music shake you\\
Let the rhythm take you\\
Feel it in your body\\
Sing la-dee-da-dee
* Kingston Wall's "When Something Old Dies" contains the line "Something new borns when something old dies" over and over. The songwriter Petri Walli knew full well it was grammatically incorrect, but to him it just sounded better.
* Against Me! (well, technically Laura Jane Grace, as she writes all of their lyrics) invokes this in many of their songs. "You Look Like I Need a Drink" is an extreme example, requiring Grace to employ rapid-fire vocal delivery just to keep in time, which is already at a very high tempo. Less extreme, but still a painful example: the minor hit "Thrash Unreal".
* 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 (and not always succeeding, infamously rhyming "sonnets" with "hornet").
* This is ridiculously prolific Swedish record producer Max Martin's preferred method of writing and producing songs, especially since English is also his second language. He deploys a concept that he called "melodic math", in which the song lyrics take a backseat to the music and the syllables must match the beat. While writing and producing "I Want It That Way", for Music/BackstreetBoys, they protested that the lyrics made no sense. He allowed them to record two versions of the song, one where the lyrics made sense, and the original one. The band ultimately chose the original nonsensical lyrics because it made the song flow better.
** On the topic of grammar errors, "All I Have to Give" has the lines "does his gifts come from the heart" and "does his friends get on your time". This is especially unsettling because "do his gifts..." and "do his friends..." would have fit the metric just fine.
** 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" [[note]]because "am" wouldn't rhyme with "heart"[[/note]], as well as the oxymoron "I only wanna die alive". As with the Backstreet Boys example, Ariana initially objected to singing those words, but Max convinced her otherwise.
* In a sort-of non-musical example, the poetry of Creator/{{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.

* Music/ThePolice 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")
* The later verses of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" are very guilty of this:
-->''With little tin horns and little toy drums\\
Rooty-toot-toots and rummy-tums-tums\\
Santa Claus is comin' to town\\
With curly-head dolls that toddle and coo\\
Elephants, boats, and kiddie cars too''
* After Barry [=McGuire=]'s ProtestSong "Eve of Destruction" became a #1 hit, an answer song called "The Dawn of Correction" by The Spokesmen was quickly recorded and released and became a Top 40 hit in its own right. The original had some notable Shoehorns ("My blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'") of its own, but "The Dawn of Correction", in trying to make a coherent comment on 1965 current events, while trying to have practically every line of its verse end with an "-ation" rhyme, came up with quite a few doozies:
-->''You missed all the good in your evaluation.\\
What about the things that deserve commendation?\\
Where there once was no cure, there's vaccination.\\
Where there once was a desert, there's vegetation.\\
Self-government's replacing colonization.\\
What about the Peace Corps organization?\\
Don't forget the work of the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations.''
* Music/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"...
* "FRIENDS" by Marshmello and Anne-Marie is a SpellingSong, but the proper spelling of the word "friends" has one syllable too many to fit the chorus melody, 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".
** A similar thing occurs in L'Homme Run's song "Pizza Party". They spell out the song title, but it ends up sounding like "P-I-Z-Z-A P-R-T-Y" because "P-A-R-T-Y" wouldn't have worked with the melody - so it's like "P-AR-TY".
* WebVideo/RandyRainbow:
** The chorus of "Desperate Cheeto" features words like "bleep-o" and "creep-o" to make them all sort of rhyme with "cheeto" and fit the meter of the song. There's also a verse containing the line "stop smoking marijuania" to make it rhyme with "Melania" and "ya".
** "A Very Stable Genius" has "penius", "vaginias" and "subpoenias".
* The theme song for ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening'', "Devils Never Cry", has this line:
-->Yearning more to hear the suffer (of a)
-->Of a demon as I put it under
* Music/EinsturzendeNeubauten "Was Ist, Ist". Half of the lyrics are nonsensical revolutionary political claims, half adlibbed each time it is sung, [[TooManyHalves and half fillers a la "dididi und didi di."]]
* The Music/AustralianCrawl song "The Boys Light Up" includes the lines ''The garden it is Dorseted / That lady she's so corseted''. The song's writer James Reyne admitted that "[[PerfectlyCromulentWord Dorseted]]" isn't a real word, it's just intended to rhyme with "corseted" and sound vaguely suburban.
* Music/RickyMartin's "Livin' La Vida Loca" had a dilemma in its chorus: the only workable English word to rhyme with "loca" is "mocha". But a reference to coffee in a song about a FemmeFatale would seem weird. But the solution they came up with was equally odd and tortured.
-->Her lips are devil-red\\
And her skin's the color mocha[[note]]"the color mocha" is necessary because "her skin's mocha" makes it sound like she's made of coffee, (and there's no room for an "of"), but it's still an inelegant construct for a song lyric[[/note]]

* Music/{{Eminem}} has faced criticism on recent projects for lyrics based on HurricaneOfPuns wordplay in order to force rigid rhyme schemes, resulting in peculiar lyrics like "pressure increases like khakis". Eminem responded to the criticism by saying he just puts in lines he thinks of that make him laugh and doesn't care if critics like it.
* "My Egyptian Grammar" by Fiery Furnaces bizarrely mangles the grammar of the sentence "she let me into the car" for the sake of rhyme. However, the song is [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness from the point of view of an increasingly delusional narrator]], so it can also be read as the character getting her word order mixed up because she's agitated or in a manic state:
-->A white-haired half-Samoan girl from '''Darwin'''
-->Gave me a ride, it seems
-->She let me the '''car in'''

--> [[Recap/StrongBadEmailE133Bottom10 Ugh. What were they thinking? More like "We need to feed]] ''[[Recap/StrongBadEmailE133Bottom10 our]]'' [[Recap/StrongBadEmailE133Bottom10 children, so we made this terrible song."]]

* Music/{{REM}}"