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Following

Stock Rhymes
aka: Stock Rhyme

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"While they ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes.
Where-e'er you find the cooling Western Breeze,
In the next Line, it whispers thro' the Trees;
If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep,
The Reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with Sleep".
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

A Stock Rhyme is a kind of rhyme / that everyone sees all the time. The reasons for this can vary: the rhyme choice may be extremely limited, as with love, alternate rhymes may be unusual words that are not very widely applicable (fire/spire, life/fife), or the rhyme may be particularly well-suited to a popular type of song like Silly Love Songs. Like with many stock tropes, a predictable rhyme can make an audience cringe, but a sufficiently awesome artist can often breathe new life into them.

To qualify as a Stock Rhyme it should be used by at least several different artists without any apparent intentional reference to one another. Imperfect rhymes are okay. Some Stock Rhymes may be specific to a particular genre, such as "trigger/nigga" in gangsta rap or "Word/Lord" in Christian hymns.

Examples

Rhymes that are shorthand for entire genres

  • moon/June/spoon was extensively mocked in The '40s and The '50s as a shorthand for factory-standard, Tin Pan Alley Silly Love Songs. Even now, if you mention "moon-June-spoon songs", people will know what you mean.
    • An early and extreme example of this was "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", which rhymed the moon in its title not only with June and spoon, but also with croon, tune and soon.
    • Yoko Ono mocked Paul McCartney for rhyming "June" with "spoon"; he actually did once rhyme "spoon" with "lagoon" in "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window".
      • Her husband rhymed "You know that for sure" with "You got to let it go" and "You got to let it grow" in Mind Games.
    • Jonathan King wrote "Everyone's Gone to the Moon", which was, according to King, "a stupid song, that would actually rhyme 'moon' and 'June', but be so pretentious no one would notice" as a send up of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. He was right.
    • Subverted (for laughs) in a Pinky and the Brain episode, where Brain can't come up with any rhymes for June, despite obvious inspiration being all around him. He later decides to change it to "April". Made even worse when the song actually plays later in the episode: the song contains an overly-long list of "June" rhymes, and April is still the final word of the song.
    • Not entirely a dead rhyme; Rodney Atkins' "It's America" uses moon/June in the chorus.
    • Soft Machine has a song titled "Moon in June", which doesn't actually rhyme those words (they're not even in the lyrics at all).
    • Procol Harum used this rhyme in a somewhat different context than usual in "A Salty Dog": "Now many moons and many Junes have passed since we made land" (in which those words are synonymous with "months" and "years", respectively)
    • '70s soft-rockers Bread: "And Aubrey was her name / We tripped the light and danced together to the moon / But where was June?"
    • Prince's "Sign o' the Times" from Sign o' the Times
    • Also appears quite recently: on Spiders by System of a Down, Moon is rhymed with both June and Tune."
    • Lampshaded in Shrek 2: "You can spoon on the moon/With the prince, 'til it's June!"
    • June Moon and Joe Doe are the "rhyme scene investigators" in related Sesame Street sketch.
    • In one '60s strip of the British newspaper comic The Perishers, young Wellington gets all cod-philosophical on the subject while looking at the moon with his dim friend Marlon.
      Wellington: Moon and June, how well they go together... but if June had been called Moptember or the moon had been called the blop, well, they just wouldn't have rhymed, would they?
      Marlon (shining a torch in Wellington's direction): I can see right up your nose.
    • Lampshaded by Elton John in "Tinderbox" from the autobiographical album The Captain & the Kid:
      Was he worried we might go too far
      Maybe wind up rhyming moon and June
    • In the Recess episode "The Substitute", substitute teacher Mr. E compliments Mikey's poetry but advises him "Lose the Moon/June stuff. You're better than that."
    • The Ames Brothers' version of "East of the Sun" on their Destination Moon album ends with the singers throwing in about every "moon-June" rhyme they could think of:
      Moon, spoon, June, croon, tune, soon, swoon, va-voom!
    • In The Smashing Pumpkins rarity "Bye June", this is pretty much the only line in the entire song:
      Bye June / I'm goin to the moon / Hope you'll make it soon / 'cause I'm waiting on this moon
    • In the Ready Jet Go! episode "How Come the Moon Changes Shape?", Carrot and Celery's love duet has the following lyrics:
      "Let's fly our little saucer to the moon / It's a perfect Earthie evening in June"
    • The Traditional Pop standard "Down With Love" (used as the theme for Down with Love) uses this ironically:
      Down with love, let's liquidate all its friends
      Like moons, Junes, roses and rainbows ends
    • The hook of Eminem's "Space Bound" (written by British singer-songwriter Steve McEwan), in order to reinforce that the song does not turn out to be a happy love song.
      I'm a space-bound rocket ship and your heart's the Moon
      And I'm aimin' right at you, right at you
      250,000 miles on a clear night in June
      And I'm aimin' right at you, right at you, right at you
    • In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, the episode "The Junkman Cometh" has Carl sing a brief song consisting entirely of these three words on repeat (as well as the word "spittoon") while he, Jimmy, and Sheen fly to the moon.
    • The classic Warner Bros. song "I Love to Singa", popularized by the Merrie Melodies short of the same name, mentions "the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a" as subjects the singer enjoys singing about.
    • "Moon June Spoon" by Alternative Rock band Spot uses its Title Drop ironically, as the singer spends the song struggling with his temptation to cheat on his partner ("life isn't Rockwell, life isn't moon june spoon"). The chorus does still end up rhyming "spoon" with "moon" though.
  • lyrical/miracle/individual/spiritual is so synonymous with bad, geeky conscious/underground rappers that by now it's only ever used to make fun of them.
    • Case in point: Filthy Frank (in his PolitikZ persona) in "REAL HIP HOP".
    • Eminem:
      • Em, always up for making fun of other rappers, uses this in a skit during Shady Records' BET Cypher in 2011. After the other Shady Records acts have finished their verses, Joe Budden starts begging Eminem to rap, who acts like a clueless idiot ("wait, can I rap?"). When he takes the mic, he begins rapping completely off the beat:
        Eminem: Ayo. Lyrical miracle, spiritual individual, criminal, subliminal, in your swimming pool.
        (the other rappers start jeering and booing, Em sets the mic on the floor)
        Crooked I: (corpsing) "Metaphysical"!
      • Eminem has also used this rhyme without irony several times. The most notable is his bad, geeky conscious/underground rap album Infinite, on the song "Tonite":
        I've got miracle lyrical capability all in me, with the agility to escape a killer bee colony
      • He also used it in the freestyle "R&B Bitches":
        And here I go with the lyrical, miracle, spiritual, let it go, every time, I'm incredible...
      • And in "Wicked Ways":
        It's a fuckin' miracle to be this lyrical
      • Eminem also listed 'lyrical miracle' in Stuff To Never Rhyme, with Mr. Porter suggesting "if you're lyrical, you've gotta be a mortal human being".
    • Kendrick Lamar, in his guest verse on Kanye West's "No More Parties in LA":
      Make a nigga say big words and get lyrical
      Make me get spiritual
      Make me believe in miracles, Buddhist monks and Cap'n Crunch cereal
  • bottles/models is such a Glam Rap cliche that calling someone a 'bottles-models rapper' means their career is mostly about providing depthless guest verses on party jams about being In Da Club.

Everything else

  • girl/world (Aqua's "Barbie Girl", Madonna's "Material Girl" and "4 Minutes", Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl", Brooks & Dunn's "Rock My World (Little Country Girl)", Tori Amos' "Upside Down", Hilary Duff's "All Around the World", Gwen Stefani's "Rich Girl", Beyonce's "Save the Hero", almost any song with a line ending in "girl.")
    • A particularly heinous example occurs in Misteeq's "Scandalous" rhyming not only 'girl' with 'world' but also with 'pearls' and 'twirl'
    • Subverted in "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" by Led Zeppelin: "You can tell your friends all around the world / there ain't no companion like a blue-eyed" In any other song, the next word would be "girl", but since this song is actually about Robert Plant's dog, the word is "Merle."
    • Also subverted in "My Kind of Girl" by Collin Raye, which uses "Merle", "pearls", and "Tilt-a-Whirl" as rhymes.
    • George Strait's "How 'bout Them Cowgirls" uses "round world"/"cowgirls", which is an internal rhyme variant.
    • Joe Diffie's "So Help Me Girl" also subverts this because the chorus is five lines long with an AABBC rhyme pattern, of which "And I can't help myself, so help me, girl" is the last line.
    • And of course, possibly the most famous example: "Just a small town girl/Living in a lonely world..."
    • Also seen in Emilia's 1998 hit, "Big Big World." Unfortunately, it's like the best rhyme in this song.
    • And Bob Dylan's "Brownsville Girl": "Brownsville girl/Show me all around the world"
    • "Want you to make me feel / Like I'm the only girl in the world..."
    • A more exact rhyme for "girl" is "(heart's in a) whirl." It's thankfully long obsolete, but it was one of several cliché rhymes lampshaded in an early Cole Porter parody of Silly Love Songs.
      • There's an episode of Precious Pupp called "Girl Whirl".
      • In this poem about Laverne & Shirley, it refers to the title characters as "these two girls", then adds that the poem will "get them in a whirl".
    • Selena Gomez' "Forget Forever" rhymes "rule the world" and "perfect girl".
    • The chorus of Survivor's "High on You" breaks the rhythm for the sake of this rhyme: "I can't stop thinking 'bout you girl / I must be living in a fantasy world"
    • "Roni" by Bobby Brown: "The truth about Roni, she's a sweet ol' girl / About the sweetest little girl in the whole wild world"
    • "I'm just a girl in the world/That's all you'll ever let me beeeee!!!"
    • The theme tune to The Loud House, a cartoon about a boy with ten sisters, has the lyric "One boy and ten girls. Wouldn't trade it for the world."
    • In The Smurfs, the rap about Smurfette notes, "Not another single girl in the whole Smurf world".
    • Exploited Trope: Eminem, known for his complex and unexpected rhyme schemes, loves to do a groanworthy rhyme of girl and world whenever he wants to emphasise that his character is being manipulative or insincere.
      • In "My Fault", a song about a worthless date-rapist causing a girl's suicide by giving her hallucinogens at a party, the hook reinforces his character's lack of serious interest in her plight:
        I never meant to give you mushrooms, girl
        I never meant to bring you to my world
      • In the Misogyny Song "Superman", the hook, in which his alter-ego Slim Shady sweet-talks women in a LL Cool J-ish way in order to use them for sex, uses this in contrast with an, uh, less cliched rhyme:
        I wanna save you, girl, come be in Shady's world.
        (Oh boy, you drive me crazy!) (BITCH, YOU MAKE ME HURL.)
      • In "Just Lose It", Slim accidentally admits to paedophilia and has to start Verbal Backpedaling:
        Yeah, boy, shake that thing.
        Whoops, I mean, 'girl'. Girl girl girl.
        (Do you know that you're my world?)
      • "Intro (Curtain Call)", the skit introducing the intentionally putrid "FACK", is delivered by a group of multitracked Eminems singing like a doo-wop quartet:
        Girl (Girl, girl, girl)
        You're my world (world, world, world)
        You're my pearl (pearl, pearl, pearl)
        You're my world (woooorld)...
        Ayo, here's a song for the ladies...
    • "Weight of the World" from NieR: Automata:
      'Cause we're gonna shout it loud
      Even if our words seem meaningless
      It's like I'm carrying the weight of the world
      I wish that some way, somehow
      That I could save every one of us
      But the truth is that I'm only one girl.
    • "Chantilly Lace" by The Big Bopper opines that "there ain't nothin' in the world like a big-eyed girl."
    • "He's Flying" from SpongeBob SquarePants has a part where Mrs. Puff's pet snail gets stuck up a tree, leading her to sing "I've had her since I was a little girl / But now it looks like the end of her world."
    • "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut:
      Well, Kyle's mom's a bitch, she's a big fat bitch
      She's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world
      She's a stupid bitch if there ever was a bitch
      She's a bitch to all the boys and girls
  • baby/maybe/lady/crazy (Buddy Holly's use is tame compared to the Eagles' "Take It Easy", the Spin Doctors' "Two Princes", the Four Seasons' "Walk Like A Man", anyone who sang "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby" or "Hey, Good Lookin'", "Maybe" from Annie...)
    • Used among others by OFWGKTA member Tyler, the Creator (as Big Nasty) in this video.
    • 'Call Me Maybe' by Carly Rae Jepsen has an entire chorus made up of this rhyme (rhyming crazy/maybe, then baby/maybe)
    • 'Butterfly' by Crazy Town has this as its chorus as well.
    • "Hang in there, baby, things are crazy, but I know your future's bright/Hang in there, baby, There's no maybe, everything turns out alright..."
    • "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd has this in the first verse.
    • In Tomodachi Life, one of the available songs for your Miis to sing is "Maybe Baby", an Affectionate Parody of Silly Love Songs.
    • Eminem tends to rhyme 'baby', 'crazy' and 'lady' with the name of his alter ego, '(Slim) Shady', and occasionally the name of his daughter, 'Hailie'. (Plus, when he tends to rhyme 'crazy' and 'baby', it's less likely to be because he's lovesick for his girl, and more likely to be that he's insane because he's doing something terrible to a literal infant.)
      • "Guilty Conscience", in Dre's verse about the construction worker Grady considering shooting his wife (which Eminem ghostwrote):
        Dre: Alright, Shady, maybe he's right, Grady
        But think about the baby before you get all crazy
      • His guest verse in "What The Beat" (along with Rhyming with Itself):
        Cause I ain't crazy, I say shit that's crazy to crazy people
        to make 'em believe I'm crazy so they can relate to me
        and maybe believe in Shady so they can be evil, baby
        I like that! I'm only as crazy as people made me
      • "My Band":
        'Sup. Ladies.
        My name's Slim Shady.
        I'm the lead singer of D12, baby!
      • In his guest hook for "Shady Baby" by Obie Trice (not Em's finest work as a lyricist):
        You can’t stop us, Shady baby
        So come party with my crazy group
        Yeah, we're wilin’, yeah we're crazy!
        (Whoo!) Yeah, come on, Sha-a-a-ady!
      • "When I'm Gone":
        That's Slim Shady, yeah, baby, Slim Shady's crazy.
        Shady made me, but tonight Shady's rock-a-bye baby.
  • together/forever
    • Typical example from Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now": "And we can build this dream together / Standing strong forever"
    • Peter Cetera's "Glory of Love": "We'll live forever/Knowing together/That we did it all for the glory of love."
    • Belinda Carlisle's "Circle in the Sand" uses this rhyme each time it leads up to the chorus: "Oh baby, when you look for me, can you see forever? I begin, baby, where you end, we belong together."
    • Lee Carr deserves a special mention for releasing a song called "Together", but never rhyming the title itself with anything. "Forever", "each other", and "another" never even appear in the song.
    • Together/weather is pretty popular too, usually taking the form of something like "we'll always be together/no matter what the weather".
    • The ASDF Movie song "The Muffin Song" has "You and I were bound together, especially since cartoons live forever."
    • The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland has "together forever the world seems fine" as a song lyric.
    • The song "Better Days" by SuperM has the line "'Cause no storm is forever, we're gonna get through this together."
    • "Careless Whisper" by George Michael has "We could have been so good together / We could have lived this dance forever."
    • Rick Astley has a song called "Together Forever." So does Pokémon 2.B.A. Master.
    • "Forever" by Kamelot:
      Will you revive from the chaos in my mind
      Where we still are bound together
      Will you be there waiting by the gates of dawn
      When I close my eyes forever?
  • heart/start/apart
    • In the early 20th century, the stock rhyme for "heart" was "Cupid's dart." Jerome Kern apparently loathed this one.
    • In The Wizard of Oz rhymes "I'm torn apart" with "If I only had a heart."
  • party/Bacardi (Mariah Carey's "It's Like That", Huey Dunbar's "Bacardi Party", Jagged Edge's "Where the Party At?", Nada Surf's "Bacardi", Official Kardinal's "Bacardi Slang", Benzino's "Rock the Party", 50 Cent's "In The Club", Flight of the Conchords "Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor", and many others)
    • Comedian Mike Birbiglia's "Guitar Guy At The Party", more of a bit than a song, contains this rhyme along with a couple of other awful rhymes. Apart from the few that suck, the rest of the song doesn't rhyme at all.
    • "Hello, Hello There" from Bells Are Ringing averts this in a bizarre way by non-rhyming "party" with "salami."
    • Cardi B has taken to rhyming "party" with Cardi.
    • Eminem, in "Drug Ballad", does a complex variation by rhyming "Marky Mark", "party start", "Bacardi Dark" and "hardly talk".
  • margarita/señorita, similar in concept to the above.
  • fingertips/lips/hips ("Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus comes first to mind)
  • self/shelf/else/health/wealth (the Divinyls' "I Touch Myself", Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself"). Tends to be pretty awkward because there's rarely a legitimate reason to discuss a shelf that doesn't involve rhyming.
    • "Are you happy with yourself?/Put the book back on the shelf" ("Put the Book Back on the Shelf", Belle & Sebastian)
    • "Lay your whole life upon a shelf / Got no one to blame but your own damn self" from "Carry On" by Pat Green
    • Led Zeppelin's Misty Mountain Hop does this, although obscured by the song's rather complex rhythm:
    Why don't you take a good look at yourself and describe what you see
    And baby, baby, baby, do you like it?
    There you sit, sitting spare like a book on a shelf, rusting
    Ah, not trying to fight it
    • Bob Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of hearts" has this: "Big Jim was thinking to himself/Maybe down in Mexico or a picture upon somebody's shelf".
    • Weezer's "Keep Fishin'": It's just the thought of you in love with someone else / it breaks my heart to see you hangin' from a shelf".
    • "Y.M.C.A." by the Village People: "No man does it all by himself / I said young man, put your pride on the shelf"
    • "Ch-Check It Out" by Beastie Boys:
    Yo money, don't chump yourself
    Put that shit back on the shelf
    • "Already Gone" by Eagles.
    • Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me"
    • Gym Class Heroes "Stereo Hearts": "If I was just another dusty record on the shelf, would you take me out and play me like everybody else?"
    • TheNineteenSeventyFive "The Sound": "And we left things to protect my mental health, but you call me when you're bored and you're playing with yourself"
    • Georgy Girl: The main theme rhymes "rearranging yourself" with "dropping down from the shelf".
    • There's the rhyme about how being an early riser makes you "healthy, wealthy, and wise".
    • "Ghost Town" by The Specials has "Why must the youth fight against themself / Government leaving the youth on the shelf."
  • fire/desire/higher (as in The Carpenters' "Merry Christmas Darling": The logs on the fire/fill me with desire)
    • Used by many well-regarded bands e.g, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, The Doors etc.
      • Also, on the same album (In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3), in the titular song, the chorus goes "Man your own jackhammer/man your battle stations, we'll have you dead pretty soon, and now/sincerely written from my brothers blood machine/man your battlestations, we'll have you home pretty soon". The first half has no rhyme, but the second..."Sincerely written from my brother's blood moo-shay-on, man your battle staaaaaaaaaations"
      • Edgar Allan Poe gave some of the earliest examples, except that he's talking about actual fire that burns you to death rather than the standard lust bit.
    • "Flame" by Pete Townshend. "Flame, you set me on fire/Nothing can take me any higher/I'm fueled on emotion and full of desire."
    • In perhaps the most distilled example of this trope, U2 manages to work both fire/desire and lips/fingertips into a single verse in "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
      • U2 also pulls off fire/higher/desire in— what else?— "Desire".
      • So does Alabama in "There's a Fire in the Night".
    • Augustana manages this with the song "Fire" "Fire burning me up/Desire taking me so much higher/And leading me home"
    • Les Claypool uses the fire/desire rhyme in the Primus song "Lacquer Head", though he compensates by rhyming "in-betweens" with "gasoline" immediately afterward.
    • All three see use in the rock song "Give In To Me" by Michael Jackson. "Love is a feeling/Give it when I want it/Cause I'm on fire/Quench my desire" and later it changes up to "Love is a feeling/Quench my desire/Give it when I want it/Taking me higher."
    • Marilyn Monroe's "I Wanna Be Loved by You". "I couldn't aspire to anything higher than to fill the desire..."
    • Cleverly subverted by Survivor in "Burning Heart", in which for once Captain Obvious does come to the rescue, causing "fire" to rhyme with its obvious-but-never-used natural counterpart "spire".
    • The entire catalog of Electric Six. Their first album is Fire. It is called fire because the word 'fire' is repeated and rhymed abundantly in the album.
    • The Marianas Trench song "Pop 101", which is a Take That! to pop music in general, lampshades this in the chorus.
    • "Come down with fire/Set my spirit higher/Someone's calling my name/Come and make me holy again."
    • "Sent over seas to cast into fire/Fought for a purpose with pride and desire/ Blood of the brave they would give to inspire/Cobras Fumantes, your memory lives!” A rather odd example in that the fire is gunfire, not flames or lust.
    • Dan Hartman's "Relight My Fire" (later Covered Up by Take That (Band)) rhymes the title with "your love is my only desire."
    • "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash says, "I fell down to the burning ring of fire. Down, down, the flames were burning higher."
    • Kygo's "Firestone" has all three in the first verse, along with "inspire".
    • The Silly Book has "Uncle Billy ate some fire. His temperature grew higher and higher."
    • Arguably the most common rhyme within Eurobeat music. Makes sense, considering lyrics were never meant to be the genre's strongest point.
    • Also fairly common in the Eurovision Song Contest. "You're a fire/and desire/When I kiss your lips, you know, you take me higher"
    • "You are my fire/The one desire..."
    • "Here we sing about wants and desires/Depravity, savagery, loins hotter than fire!"
    • "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits:
      Through these fields of destruction
      Baptisms of fire
      I witnessed your suffering
      As the battle raged higher.
  • love/above/of. Also —/glove/shove/dove. Songwriters are often advised to avoid rhyming "love".
    • Kenny Rogers' "Tomb of the Unknown Love" uses love/above/love in the chorus, and shove/love in the first verse.
    • "From Austin back to Chaucer
      My weary eyes I shove
      But never come across a
      New word to rhyme with love."
    • Lampshaded by Ogden Nash in his poem "Spring Song"
    While ye, ye otherwise useless dove,
    Remember, please, to rhyme with love.
  • table/able
    • At one point in The Worst Witch, Miss Cackle says a spell about something being on the table, then "let me vanish you if I'm able."
    • The Preschool Popstars song "Wait Until I Cook It" rhymes "I don't think I'm able" with "put it on the table".
  • long/gone/on
  • trigger/nigga/bigger/golddigger/Schwarzenegger/quicker/liquor, too many gangsta rap songs to count. When rhyming with "nigga", they'll often pronounce the other word as if it ended in an "-ah" sound. "Quicker" and "liquor" only work in some accents.
    And makes a similar joke in "Criminal"
    I drank more liquor to fuck you up quicker
    Than you'd wanna fuck me up for saying the word, "..."
  • waiting/anticipating
    • "You Can't Hurry Love" by the Supremes.
    • And "Try A Little Tenderness" by Otis Redding.
    • And "Rockin' Into The Night" by .38 Special'
  • apartment/heart meant (Billie Holiday's "These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)", Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?", Material Issue's "What Girls Want", Rachel Platten's "53 Steps")
  • california/warn ya (The Trade Winds' "New York Is a Lonely Town", John Stewart's "Omaha Rainbow", Bob Dylan's "Sign on The Window", Albert Hammond's "It Never Rains in Southern California", Gary Allan's "She's So California"... and about Eleventy Zillion other California songs.)
    • Wax's "California" rhymes California with "warned you."
      • Josh Gracin's "We Weren't Crazy" makes it a ton worse by going with "California" and "warn us".
      • The Red Hot Chili Peppers use this rhyme in "Around The World", but then in "Dani California" they used the less expected "mourn ya".
    • "Because, It's Midnite" by Limozeen.
    • "Kids in America" by Kim Wilde.
    • "California Gurls" by Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg. Somehow Snoop D-O-Double-G is able to rhyme "all up on ya" with "California".
    • Billie Eilish's "All the Good Girls Go to Hell".
  • fly/sky/high
    • One of the most compressed examples of this is Yves La Rock's "Rise Up" ("I try to fly a while so high / direction sky")
    • Of course, Sky High in Daytona USA had it too. Except "fly" sounded like "fry".
    • Just one of many crimes against music in R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly."
    • The Moody Blues song "Blue World" used all three in the same line: "Fly me high, touch the sky/Leave the earth below...."
    • The very first verse of Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" rhymes all three of these words. In an arguable case of Rhyming with Itself, "dragonfly" shows up as a rhyme in the same stanza.
    • "High" by Hyper Go Go.
    • A song Peppa makes up in Peppa Pig has the lyric "Flying high, in the sky, flying high and high and high."
    • Josie Jump's song in Balamory has the lyric "Sometimes I get the feeling I want to jump up high. I got to keep on running so fast I think I'll fly."
    • In Sesame Street, the song "That's Being a Cat" has the lyric "Jump up someplace six feet high, like a monkey on the fly."
    • "Here Comes the Flood" by Peter Gabriel has "The jaded underworld was riding high / Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky."
    • "Valhalla" by Blind Guardian begins with "High in the sky / Where eagles fly."
    • "Defying Gravity" from Wicked:
      So if you care to find me
      Look to the western sky
      As someone told me lately
      Everyone deserves a chance to fly
  • home/come, and Word/Lord; These are ridiculously common in Christian hymns.
    • mild/child is another staple of hymnals.
      • "Silent Night" rhymes "virgin mother and child" (referring to Mary and Jesus) with "tender and mild".
    • blood/good/food as well.
    • praise/days is very common in modern worship music, with "days" usually ending the phrase "all (of) my days". It's common enough that it's entered normal parlance in certain Christian circles, such that it's not unusual to hear a sermon or read a book with, say, "for all your days" in a place where it would feel more natural to have "for the rest of your life" otherwise.
  • Heaven/seven (as with "love", there just aren't too many English words rhyming with "heaven")
  • dance/chance/romance. There's a Junior Senior song which is actually titled "Dance, Chance, Romance".
    • Chris De Burgh's "Lady In Red": "I've never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance / Looking for a little romance / Given half a chance"
    • And in "Mr. Right Now" by the Povertyneck Hillbillies, which has one of the most cliché bridges ever: "How do you feel about a little romance / Can I buy you a drink or do you wanna dance / What do you think, are you willing to take the chance?"
    • And in "Shine On" by James Blunt: "Are they calling for our last dance? / I see it in your eyes / Same old moves for a new romance / I could use the same old lies"
    • See also Michael Jackson's "Blood on the Dance Floor".
    • "Barbara Ann" hits all three in the first two lines ("Went to a dance looking for romance / Saw Barbara Ann and I thought I'd take a chance...")
    • "Heartcatch Paradise" starts rhyming "chance" and "dance", not with "romance", but with "change".
    • "Roni" by Bobby Brown: "Give it a chance, girl / You'll find romance"
    • The song "For the First Time in Forever" from Frozen has the lyric "And I know it is totally crazy to dream I'd find romance, but for the first time in forever, at least I've got a chance."
    • "And We Danced" by The Hooters:
      And we danced
      Like a wave on the ocean, romanced
      We were liars in love and we danced
      Swept away for a moment by chance
  • lonely/only (Roy Orbison's "Only The Lonely")
  • cry/die/try or crying/dying/trying
    • The Sesame Street song "It's All Right to Cry" has the lyric, "You can't keep the tears back, you don't have to try. It's all right to cry."
    • Y the fly from the kids' book Ook the Book has, "I will try, not to cry".
    • "The Long and Winding Road" by The Beatles:
      Many times I've been alone
      And many times I've cried
      Anyway you'll never know
      The many ways I've tried
    • The ending of "Time What Is Time" by Blind Guardian has "God he knows how long I've tried / Feel there is no reason to cry."
  • good/hood
    • In non-hip-hop music, good/should/would/could. "Finishing The Hat" from Sunday in the Park with George rhymes "understood" with the other four.
      • The Cat In The Hat Comes Back has the line "This is good. This is what they should do and I knew that they would."
      • Sesame Street has the song "Pride", with the lyric, "When you've done the best you could, you feel really, really good."
      • In The Berenstain Bears, some of Brother's classmates tease him for being a Teacher's Pet with the rhyme "Brother, Brother is so good. He does everything he should."
  • groovy/movie Four songs in the 1960s, apparently not connected: "Do You Believe in Magic" by The Lovin' Spoonful in 1965, "Spooky" by Classics IV in 1967 (covered by Dusty Springfield in 1970), "Like an Old Time Movie" by Scott McKenzie in 1967, and "Elenore" by The Turtles in 1968. Also, "Manchester England" from Hair.
    • Used in the song "Headlong" by Queen (Band) in 1991. ("You're getting in a fight, then it ain't so groovy / When you're screaming in the night, "Let me out of this cheap B-movie!")
    • Used in "Great Day" by Madvillain in 2004. ("Groovy dude, not to prove or be rude, but/ This stuff is like what ya might put on movie food")
    • This rhyme actually got used in "The Way" by Ariana Grande featuring Mac Millar in 2013, well after the point where anyone would otherwise be likely to use the word "groovy" without being sarcastic (or without referencing Austin Powers or Evil Dead 2). Though even when getting into slant-rhymes, very few other things rhyme with "movie".
    • "You look a lot more blond in your movie, baby. That's alright, let's just keep it groovy baby!"
  • soul/rock n roll (as in Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll")
  • care/prayer
    • The song "Blue Moon" has "You heard me saying a prayer for someone I really could care for."
  • about/without
    • Another common rhyme for "about" is "shout".
      • The Generation O! song "Proud to be Loud" rhymes "spout", "about", "out", and "shout".
      • The limerick about the mouse in someone's stew has, "Cried the waiter, 'Don't shout, and wave it about.'"
      • The Sesame Street song "Do the Dog", says, "I've got a new dance to tell you about. A dance to make you bark, not scream or shout."
    • Also, "out" with "about", seen in the Animaniacs song "I'm Mad" and the phrase "out and about".
    • In Star Trek: Voyager, the Doctor's imaginary song has the lyric "You have just gone without, for seven years about."
  • be/me (Very mundane, but very overused as well. Montgomery Gentry's "Roll with Me" uses it twice.)
    • Rhett Akins' "That Ain't My Truck": "She's been going out with him, she's been going out with me / Said she'd let us know by tonight which one it would be"
  • day/way
  • Blarney/Killarney ("Christmas in Killarney" and many other songs about Oireland)
  • this/kiss
  • walk/talk and walkin/talkin
    • Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" comes to mind; of course, it also has the inevitable "girl"/"world" rhyme.
    • "What's The Use Of Wond'rin'" from Carousel goes out on a weak note with "walk"/"talk", because Hammerstein had found "stay or go"/"know" not too convincing either.
    • The first two lines of "Fixer-Upper" from Frozen2013 are "Is it the clumpy way he walks or the grumpy way he talks?".
    • The Cup Song has "You're gonna miss me by my walk / You're gonna miss me by my talk, oh". And no, it's not "You're gonna miss me by my taco".
    • "Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk / I'm a woman's man, no time to talk."
    • The narrator of "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio warns the listener to watch "how you talkin' and where you walkin'."
    • The common expression "talk the talk, walk the walk."
  • miss you/kiss you
    • Worst offender is "Me and my heart we got issues/Don't know if I should hate you or miss you/Damn I wish that I could resist you/Can't decide if I should slap you or kiss you".
    • The Rolling Stones' "Miss You" from Some Girls has it in the very first verse.
    • Also kiss me/miss me, such as in Brooks & Dunn's "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone" ("You'd better kiss me, 'cause...").
      • "She Loves Me Like She Means It" by Orrall & Wright uses "misses me"/"kisses me".
    • P!nk's "Leave Me Alone, I'm Lonely": Go away, give me a chance to miss you./Say goodbye it'll make me want to kiss you.
  • song/along (most often involving the phrase "sing along")
    • One of the most egregious examples is the otherwise-cool "It Was an Absolutely, Finger-Lickin', Grits and Chicken, Country Music Love Song" by Bomshel, which uses song/along/song/song in the chorus, making for a rare Stock Rhymes/Rhyming with Itself combo.
    • It's much more justified and less obvious a cliche when the song really is asking you to sing along because it's supposed to simulate the live performance atmosphere (e.g. "With a Little Help from My Friends").
    • "The Campfire Song Song" from Spongebob Squarepants
    • "Life's a Happy Song" from The Muppets (2011)
    • "The Song Remains The Same" by Led Zeppelin.
  • eyes/realize/disguise. "Lyin' Eyes" by the Eagles and "Save the Hero" by Beyonce are good examples.
  • beauty/duty
  • town/down.
    • "New York, New York" from On the Town adds "groun'" to this rhyming pair.
    • Used twice in the chorus to John Rich's "Shuttin' Detroit Down", which only makes it worse by forcing it with the phrase "New York City town".
    • "Harder Than Steel" by The Megas: "This is your chance, this is your town / You don't just break the mold, you beat it down!"
    • "No Easy Way Out" by Robert Tepper:
      I don't wanna pacify
      I don't wanna drag you down
      But I'm feeling like a prisoner
      Like a stranger in a no-name town
    • The New York Mets' fight song, "Meet the Mets":
      Eastside, westside
      Everybody's coming down
      To meet the M-E-T-S Mets
      From New York town!
    • "Strange Days" by The Doors:
      Strange days have found us
      Strange days have tracked us down
      They're going to destroy
      Our casual joys
      We shall go on playing or find a new town.
    • "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai:
      I had no reason to be carefree (no no no)
      Until I took a trip to the other side of town (yeah yeah yeah)
      You know I heard that boogie rhythm, hey
      I had no choice but to get down, down, down, down
  • drink(ing)/think(ing). Ridiculously common in country music.
  • change/rearrange. Also shows up in "Lyin' Eyes".
    • KISS' "All Hell's Breakin' Loose": "And we won't change or rearrange"
    • Part 5 of Fates Warning's A Pleasant Shade of Gray:
    Watched the days just pass
    As the seasons changed
    And the shifting sands
    Slowly rearranged
    Time's makin' changes, time's makin' changes in my life
    Time's rearrangin', changin' you and me
    • Sesame Street has "Just because they rearrange, doesn't mean their numbers change."
    • "Where Are You, Christmas?" from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has "My world is changing. I'm rearranging."
    • The Georgy Girl theme has "Don't be scared of changing and rearranging yourself".
    • "Tides of Time" by Epica has "Sometimes I feel I don't want this change / I think we all have to rearrange."
  • minute/in it
    • "This is my dream and I'm gonna stay in it / For another nine minutes" from "Another Nine Minutes" by Yankee Grey
    • Used e.g. in Toby Keith's "Should've Been a Cowboy" ("she'd have said yes in a New York minute / they never tied the knot, his heart wasn't in it")
    • Peter Pan has "Leave every minute, for all that is in it."
    • "One Night in Bangkok" from Chess (1984) has "Time flies, doesn't seem a minute / Since the Tyrolean spa had the chess boys in it."
    • "When You're Evil" by Voltaire has "It's a game, I'm glad I'm in it / 'Cause there's one born every minute."
  • cup/up.
  • knowledge/college (The Police's "Wrapped Around Your Finger," Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years," Lou Reed's "Adventurer")
  • In the mid-2000s, there was a fad in hip-hop for changing the pronunciation of words to end in an "urr" sound; this allows the forced rhyme of there/here/hair/yeah/her/stare/care and numerous others. This was started by Chingy in his song "Right Thurr".
    • Kanye West used this in "All Falls Down". Note that much of it is redundant, and that he then breaks into a more organic sound for the syllable when the character makes her decision about what to do with her life:
      Now, tell me that ain't insecurr
      The concept of school seems so securr
      Sophomore, three yurrs, ain't picked a carurr
      She like, "Fuck it, I'll just stay down hurr and do hair"
      'Cause that's enough money to buy her a few pairs
      Of new Airs, 'cause her baby daddy don't really care
    • Nelly, "Air Force Ones", uses this throughout.
    • Eminem would occasionally borrow this tic in the 00s:
      • "Jimmy Crack Corn"
        So full of joy, boy, am I absurd?
        Even Chingy would tell you: "That boy don't curr!"
      • "Invasion (The Realest)" has a line interpolated from Nelly's "Air Force Ones", complete with the warped pronuncuation:
        Then I'ma get to stomping in my Urrnote  Force Ones
        But you won't be able to tell if it's two purrsnote  or it's one
  • air/care in too many songs to count.
  • insane/profane
    • Slayer (Kerry King, mostly) like to use this one. Even when it makes no sense in the context of the song. I'm looking at you, "God Send Death".
  • crazy/lazy (K-ON!'s Ending Theme, for instance)
    • Sometimes you have to wonder how little "lazy" would be used in songs if it weren't for this. Joe Jackson's "Don't Wanna Be Like That" also throws in "hazy", just for the rhyme.
    • Even The Beatles are guilty of this... twice.
      • "I'm Only Sleeping" from Revolver: "Everybody seems to think I'm lazy / I don't mind, I think they're crazy."
      • "Honey Pie" from The White Album: "Honey pie / You are making me crazy / I'm in love, but I'm lazy..."
    • Oasis in "The Importance of Being Idle," which is reminiscent of "I'm Only Sleeping."
    • Best Coast had the misfortune of using it in three songs, which has resulted in their flanderization into a band that cannot go one couplet without talking about how things are crazy and simultaneously lazy.
    • "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer"
    • In Baby Looney Tunes, the poem the talking alarm clock says involves "You might think I'm loud and crazy, but you could never call me lazy!".
    • The Arthur song "Crazy Bus" has the line "Crazy, lazy, crazy, crazy bus!".
    • The Theme Tune Rap introduced in the final season of Garfield and Friends begins with "He's fat and he's lazy / He sleeps and he's so crazy."
    • Wacky Zany Video features the Kool-Aid Man performing a rap number about slacking off which he dubs his "lazy crazy kooky track."
  • crazy/Swayze is a rarer variant localised to hip-hop (where Swayze is slang for "turned into a ghost", e.g. dead). Notable because the only reason this slang term exists is so a rhyme could be found for 'crazy'.
  • ten/again
    • The poem "The Girl Who Doubled" has "And two downstairs, and two in the bath makes ten (Maths wasn't her strongest subject), I think I've doubled again.")
  • Worse, again/in (or anything ending in "in"). Found mostly in country music, where the dialect makes "again" sound like it does rhyme with "in".
    • Taken to extremes with Billy Dean's "Only the Wind", where he rhymes "again" with "wind".
  • rhyming/timing or rhyme/time:
    • Sesame Street has two songs with this rhyme. One is about "Rhyme Time" and the other is about "I like to rhyme all of the time".
    • "Creep" by Stone Temple Pilots has "Alls I gots is time / Got no meaning, just a rhyme."
    • The "party time" rap from Titanic: The Legend Goes On has "I'll be bustin' the moves and I'll be bustin' the rhymes / We'll be bustin' up laughing 'cause it's party time!"
    • "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" by C+C Music Factory has "The jam is live in effect and I don't waste time / On the mic with a dope rhyme."
    • "Tricky" by Run–D.M.C. is a song about how it's "tricky to rock a rhyme that's right on time."
  • charms/[hold you in my] arms. Like several of the examples above, made worse by the fact that nobody would ever say anything like "I love all your charms" unless they were singing a song and planning to work some arms into the lyrics at some point.
    • Kaskade's "Steppin Out'" is a straight example (your lovely charms / when you're in my arms), along with dance/romance.
    • Another straight example comes from "Ain't Nobody" by Rufus and Chaka Khan: "At first you put your arms around me / Then you put your charms around me"
  • holly/jolly in Christmas music.
    Susan: This is a time to be jolly. With mistletoe and holly. And other things ending in "olly".
    • Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden" finds another word to rhyme with jolly: melancholy.
  • make up/break up is not as interesting a dichotomy as several musicians seem to think.
    • The Ronettes: "The best part of breakin' up/is when you're makin' up"
    • The chorus of Kim Sozzi's "Break Up": "We should break up / Cause baby I love it when we kiss and make up"
    • Katy Perry's "Hot 'n' Cold" has "We fight and break up, we kiss and make up".
  • toy/boy (usually something about treating a guy like a toy)
    I'm not your toy (I'm not your toy)
    You stupid boy (you stupid boy)
    • The Christmas carol variant: toys/girls and boys
      • Heather Alexander's self-parody "December of Cambreadth" cries out with savage Celtic glee, "How many of them can we bring toys?!" That makes it worthwhile.
    • "I've Got a Cold for Christmas", which appears to be a comedy folk song, rhymes "On Christmas Day when all the kids were playing with their toys, we noticed in the corner stood a sad and lonely boy."
    • In Mary Poppins Returns, Michael sings that he feels like a boy, with a shiny new toy.
  • rest/best - as used in advertising: "You've tried the rest, now try the best" and so on.
    • Also showed up awkwardly in the chorus of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" ("When I die and they lay me to rest / I'm going to go to the place that's the best")
    • Tina Turner: "You're simply the best/better than all the rest!"
    • In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, when Greg tries to start a snow removal service, his slogan is "You've tried the rest, now go with the best".
    • Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood has a song about how "rest is best" when you're sick.
    • In the early nineties, Ford used this as their slogan in their truck commercials: "The best never rest". Enthusiasts still associate the slogan with them thirty years later despite it no longer being in official use. cs188 also had some fun with this.
    • Sesame Street: The song "Take a Rest" rhymes the title with "sometimes it's best".
    • 64 Zoo Lane has Georgina sing that she's "the best, much better than the rest".
    • The Tweenies has Doodles the dog say that "sometimes a bone at home and a rest is the best".
    • Jody Watley: "But now you're like the rest/Unworthy of my best/Hasta la vista, baby!"
    • "Our House" by Madness:
      Father wears his sunday best
      Mother's tired, she needs a rest
      The kids are playing up downstairs
    • The Pokérap from Pokémon 2.B.A. Master begins with "I want to be the best there ever was / To beat all the rest, yeah, that's my cause."
  • swagger/Jagger was a brief fad in the 2010s. Kesha, apl.de.ap, Cher Lloyd, And She Whispered, and many others who jumped on that fad provide examples.
    • Todd in the Shadows said in his review of Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" (which, thankfully, does not contain the word "swagger") that he wishes there were such a word as "schmogerty" so that a more underappreciated rock star like John Fogerty could get his due as a stock rhyme.
    • Material Issue actually subverted this expectation a good 20 years before it became a fad among artists in "What Girls Want": "I want a man with lips just like Mick Jagger / Rod Stewart's hair and Keith Richards' stagger."
    • In Eminem, Mr. Porter and Royce da 5'9"'s Stuff To Never Rhyme video, he specifies that if you have swagger, you can not be like Mick Jagger. Royce suggests you can be like Lou Ferrigno or someone instead.
  • war/for, usually for the sake of wondering "what this fighting is for" or somesuch.
  • goodbye/cry/lies/eyes.
    • In "Shine On" by James Blunt: "And when silence meets my last goodbyes / The words I need are in your eyes"
  • rain/brain/pain/insane
  • advice/think twice
  • friend/end (usually something like "I'll be your friend to the very end")
  • mirror/clearer (Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" from Bad, Aerosmith's "Dream On", Sleigh Bells' "Bitter Rival")
    • "Human" by Rag'n'Bone Man: "Take a look in the mirror, and what do you see / Do you see it clearer, or are you deceived / In what you believe?"
  • wife/life/knife/strife
    • Goes back to 1866 with the folk song "Tom Dooley": "I met her on the mountain / There I took her life / Met her on the mountain / Stabbed her with my knife"
    • "Out of work again, the actor entertains his wife/With the same old stories of his ordinary life/Maybe he exaggerates the trouble and the strife/Well, I don't know."
    • Eminem, a enthusiast of lyrics about wife violence, has done this many times:
      • His guest verse on "Watch Dees":
        I hate my life. That's why I degrade my wife.
        Got out a paper plate to make a sandwich, and just ate the knife.
      • "I'm Shady":
        So bring the money by tonight
        'Cause your wife said this the biggest knife
        She ever saw in her life
      • "Kill You":
        Blood - guts -
        guns - cuts -
        knives - lives -
        wives - nuns - sluts
      • "The Warning" has a variation, where voice clips of Mariah Carey's alleged voicemails to him are cut in to emphasise the rhyme. Note also the use of a cliché, 'cuts like a knife', to emphasise the ironic obviousness:
        It cuts like a (knife) when I tell you get a (life)
        But I'm movin' on with mine, Nick, 'cause that's your (wife)
    • "The Good Doctor" by The Protomen begins with "My father worked the mines 'til the day it took his life / Stole him from his only son and it stole him from his wife."
    • The IMP jingle from Helluva Boss promises that "We'll kill your husband or your wife / We'll even let you keep the knife!"
    • "Ball and Chain" by Social Distortion:
      Well I've searched and I've searched
      To find the perfect life
      A brand new car and a brand new suit
      I even got me a little wife
  • death/breath Appropriately enough, shows up in "Breath", Cledus T. Judd's parody of Faith Hill's "Breathe" ("I can smell your breath, it's choking me to death / The only who doesn't know is you...")
  • poet/know it (as in, "you're a poet and you don't even know it")
    • Beastie Boys, "Car Thief":
      I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it
      I don't buy cheeba, I grow it
    • Vanilla Ice, "Ice Ice Baby"
      Take heed, 'cause I'm a lyrical poet
      Miami's on the scene, just in case you didn't know it
  • car/far
    • The Songdrops song "I Won't Give Up 'Til I Win Your Heart" has, "I put some gas inside your car but not the kind that takes you far", referring to farting.
  • roam/home (most notably in the classic "Home! Sweet Home!")
    • In Sesame Street, when the Itsy Bitsy Spider is waiting for her eggs to hatch, she says that she can't roam and is staying at home.
    • In The Shaggs songs, including "That Little Sports Car" and "My Pal Foot Foot."
    • "Sailing for Adventure" from Muppet Treasure Island rhymes "wherever we may roam" with "the sea is always home."
  • history/mystery ("Yesterday is history, tomorrow's a mystery". "Reach for the Sky" by Social Distortion, as well as countless themes to educational shows.)
  • mine/divine
    • Ira Gershwin felt justified with using this obvious rhyme in "Mine" from Let 'Em Eat Cake because he also managed to think of "more than another Valentine."
    • Oscar Hammerstein II was somewhat embarrassed about using this in "All The Things You Are," but couldn't think of anything that fit the tune better.
  • Reno/casino (e.g. in the chorus of Doug Supernaw's "Reno," the verse of the Gershwin song "Beginner's Luck")
  • Knees/please (e.g. in the chorus of The Kinleys' "Please" or "Don't Make Me" by Blake Shelton)
  • Mars/stars (it's probably easier to count the space-themed songs that DON'T do this.)
  • Tomorrow/Borrow/Sorrow (e.g. in Maroon Five's "Payphone", among many other examples.)
    • This one also shows up in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven": "Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow"
    • The poem "Jonathan Blake Ate Too Much Cake" has "There's no need for sorrow. If you come back tomorrow, I'm sure he'll be ready to play."
    • Rugrats has the lullaby "You'll feel better tomorrow but this song you can borrow."
  • Season/Reason (many examples, but there's even a song titled "The Reason for the Season")
    • How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has "The Grinch hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season, but please don't ask why; no one quite knows the reason".
    • Used for a Sampled Up Genius Bonus in Eminem's "Rhyme or Reason", where a lyric from The Zombies' "Time of the Season" ("it's the time of the season for lovin'") is interpolated by Eminem into "there's no rhyme or no reason for nothin'!" - a rhyme for the entire sentence.
  • magic/tragic
  • Night/Light/Flight/Delight
    • Especially night with morning light, as in the Go-Go's "Tonite", which at least softens the blow by omitting light ("We rule the streets tonight/ until the morning, oh, oh") until the last refrain.
    • The word "night-light."
    • "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel:
      Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
      I could see the city lights
      Wind was blowing, time stood still
      Eagle flew out of the night
    • "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey: "I got my red dress on tonight / Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight."
    • The chorus to "Enter Sandman" by Metallica begins with "Exit light / Enter night."
    • "And it's not a cry that you hear at night / It's not somebody who's seen the light / It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah."
    • "Starlight" by Starset:
      We're only here for just a moment in the light
      One day it shines for us, the next we're in the night
    • "Moonlight" by Kamelot:
      Shine on silver from the sky into the night
      Gaia shivers and I need your leading light
    • Jonathan Young:
      • His cover of "Sono Chi No Sadame" has "Brothers, two stars that run across all the heavens in the night / And they're stirring the surface of the dark and the surface of the light."
      • His cover of "The World" has "I made a promise for a change, a revolution in the night / Like a flower, dark and blooming from my love, not light."
    • "Liquid Nights and Disco Lights" by Miracle of Sound.
    • Green Lantern's iconic Badass Creed:
      In brightest day, in blackest night
      No evil shall escape my sight
      Let those who worship evil's might
      Beware my power, Green Lantern's light
    • "Snuff Out the Light," a cut Villain Song from an early version of The Emperor's New Groove:
      Apparitions of eternal darkness
      Spiraling in circles through the night
      Creatures of beguiling blackness
      No more squinting in the light
    • "Devils Never Cry" from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has "Bless me with your gift of light / Righteous cause on judgement night."
    • "Take Me Home Tonight" by Eddie Money has the refrain "Take me home tonight / I don't wanna let you go until you see the light."
    • "The Mind Electric" by Miracle Musical begins with "Think of these thoughts as limitless light / Exposing closing circuitry of fright".
    • "The Island" by Pendulum:
      What are you waiting for
      Just surrender here tonight
      What are you waiting for
      As we go towards the light
  • You/do/blue/too
    • Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now": "Whatever it takes I will stay here with you [...] Whatever it takes is what I'm gonna do"
    • "Are Your Eyes Still Blue" by Shane McAnally:
    Are your eyes still blue
    I still remember how they used to shine
    Or did that change too
    After the day you said goodbye?
    You did what you had to do
    (Out with the old, in with the new)
    If I saw you, would I even know it's you
    Are your eyes still blue?
    • Blue's Clues: It's kind of a given they'd rhyme "Blue" and "you" since they have a character called Blue, Fake Interactivity, and lots of songs.
    • The Sesame Street song "Take a Breath" has "Your face is turning blue, get some air inside of you".
  • door/floor (e.g. "Gettin' You Home (The Black Dress Song)" by Chris Young: "Walkin' through the front door / Seein' your black dress hit the floor...")
    • The Sesame Street song "Accidents Happen" rhymes "Run through the door" with "Go on the floor".
    • The song "How Dry I Am" has "I found the key, but where's the door? It's too late now, it's on the floor."
    • The Song of Durin from The Lord of the Rings describes Moria as having "Golden roof and silver floor / And runes of power upon the door."
    • "Open the door, get on the floor / Everybody walk the dinosaur!"
    • "Kick! Punch!" from PaRappa the Rapper has "Kick, punch, turn and chop the door / Or I will fall to the floor."
    • "Greased Lightning" from Grease has "With a four-speed on the floor, they'll be waitin' at the door."
  • Remember/surrender (e.g. "I Have to Surrender" by Ty Herndon; "A Night to Remember" by Joe Diffie)
  • Taxi/back seat
    • Hot Chelle Rae's "I Like It Like That"
    • Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You"
    • Lil Jon's "El Taxi"
  • stupid/Cupid
  • music/choose it/lose it/use it/abuse it
    • The Beach Boys' "Rock and Roll Music" comes to mind.
    • "Star Man" by David Bowie has "Let the children use it, let the children lose it."
  • scoop/poop, as in the phrase "pooper scooper" and many articles related to poop are titled something like "The Scoop on Poop".
    • Kanye West's "Lift Yourself" ends with whatever the fuck this is:
      Poopy-di scoop
      Scoop-diddy-whoop
      Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop
      Poop-di-scoopty
      Scoopty-whoop
      Whoopity-scoop, whoop-poop
      Poop-diddy, whoop-scoop
      Poop, poop
      Scoop-diddy-whoop
      Whoop-diddy-scoop
      Whoop-diddy-scoop, poop
  • Another toilet-related one, toilet/spoil it.
    • Enchanted rhymes "Otherwise we'd spoil it" and "Hosing down the toilet".
  • steeple/people
    • There's the kids' rhyme "This is the church, this is the steeple, open the door and see all the people".
    • Lucille Bogan's 1935 song "Shave 'Em Dry":
      Now your nuts hang down like a damn bell sapper
      And your dick stands up like a steeple
      Your god damn ass-hole stands open like a church door
      And the crabs walks in like people
    • An unused line from Eminem's "My Name Is":
      Back in the Medieval, I went up in a cathedral
      put a bomb in the steeple and killed a heapful of people
    • The joke, what is the difference between a church bell, and a robber? One peals from the steeple, the other steals from the people.
  • bike/like
  • lyin'/cryin'/tryin
    • From Toto's "Lion":
      Lyin' in a sweat
      Tryin' to forget
      All of my loving for you, girl
  • sad/bad/mad, especially in kids' songs about emotions.
  • man/can, as in the rhyme, "[so-and-so, so-and-so], he's our man, if he can't do it, no one can."
    • "Mickey" by Toni Basil:
      So come on and give it to me any way you can
      Any way you wanna do it, I'll take it like a man
    • "Taste the Blood" from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening:
      To take me out you must fight like a man
      You've yet to prove that you can
  • delicious/nutritious
  • yummy/tummy
    • "Yummy Yummy Yummy" by Ohio Express.
    • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the beginning of Felix and Annette's support chain has the latter sing "Today's dinner is steak and then a cake that's yummy yum / Now it's time to fill my tummy tummy tum!"
    • One episode of The Owl House has Luz call King a "ferocious demon," which is immediately contrasted with a shot of him holding up a cupcake and saying "Cupcakes in my tummy tum makes the King say yummy yum!"
    • Monster Cereals once had a mummy-themed cereal called Fruity Yummy Mummy with the tagline "Fruity Yummy Mummy makes your tummy go yummy!"
  • Any poem about teapots, most famously "I'm a Little Teapot", will have spout/out.
  • boring/snoring
  • Voice/choice
    • "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel:
      He was something to observe
      Came in close, I heard a voice
      Standing, stretching every nerve
      Had to listen, had no choice
    • "It Takes Two" by Rob Base: "I won't stutter, project my voice / Speak clearly, so you can be my choice."
    • "I swear it's Springfield's only choice / Throw up your hands and raise your voice! / Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!"
    • Mario Party: Island Tour features a minigame called The Choicest Voice.
    • From Toto's "The Turning Point":
      It might be by choice
      Or a small inner voice,
      I can't say
      * block/Glock/cock - another Gangsta Rap cliché.
    • Royce da 5'9" suggests on Eminem's "Stuff To Never Rhyme" video that you should never have a Glock on your block. Eminem suggests that it's OK to have a Glock on your block, so long as you don't have it cock ("it's too much"). Eminem's interest in this point might be related to the hook of his late 90s single "Just Don't Give A Fuck":
      So when you see me on yo' block with two Glocks screamin', "Fuck the world" like 2Pac...
(Note how Eminem does at least expand the rhyme to make it feel fresher - "yo' block"/"two Glocks"/"two-Pac")
  • see/me/be - ubiquitous Teen Pop or Silly Love Songs rhyme, when used in variations of "(can't you) see/(you're meant for) me/(you and I were) meant to be", etcetera.
  • bed/head - usually in some variation of "(go to) bed/(rest my) head".
    • The colloquial phrase 'bed-head'.
  • rhymes/chimes
    • The page quote.
    • Lampshaded in the skit on Eminem's Kamikaze album, where Em is driving over to the house of a "Yahoo! motherfucker" whining about him rhyming 'rhymes' with 'chimes' on Revival. Eminem explains he actually rhymed the whole sentence: "Such a breeze when I pen rhymes / I just got that air about me like wind chimes". (A lot of vowel modification was used to make this possible.)
  • nice/twice, as in the phrase "a (noun) so nice, I/we had to (verb) it twice."
  • lunch/crunch/munch
  • thunder/asunder
  • fine/[make you] mine
    • "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons.
    • "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" by Jet:
      So one, two, three, take my hand and come with me
      Because you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine
  • sword/lord, particularly in songs with religious imagery or fantasy-themed songs.
    • "The Last Stand" by Sabaton uses this in its first verse and chorus.
    • "Emerald Sword" by Rhapsody of Fire has "For the glory, the power to win the black lord / I will search for the emerald sword."
    • Dan Bull's "Skyrim Epic Rap" has "In the name of the Nords / I pray to the lords / You all get a taste of the blade of my sword."
    • "Halfman's Song" by Miracle of Sound:
      No cheekbones chiselled on a feline face
      No skill or savvy with a sword
      But this game we all play is won in wily ways
      And sly is this littlest lord.
    • "The Plagues" from The Prince of Egypt: "I send my scourge, I send my sword / Thus saith the lord."
    • The finale number of Les Misérables:
      They will live again in freedom
      In the garden of the lord
      They will walk behind the ploughshare
      They will put away the sword
  • star/car
    • "Drive My Car" by The Beatles.
    • The theme song to Aqua Teen Hunger Force:
      Drivin' in my car, livin' like a star
      Ice on my fingers and my toes and I'm a taurus
    • "Spirit Never Die" by Masterplan mentions the singer having "a fast car like a rock star."
    • "I'm Back (to Rise!)" from Killer Instinct (2013) begins with "I used to be the flashiest star / Chilling with cash and cars."
    • The chorus of "Kiss Kiss" by Holly Valance begins with "You don't have to act like a star / Try your moves in the back of the car."
    • "O My Soul" by Big Star: "I can't get a license to drive in my car /But I don't really need it, if I'm a big star"
  • heard/word
    • "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins: "But then one day I learned a word that saved me achin' nose / The biggest word you've ever heard, and this is how it goes!"
    • "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen: "There's a blaze of light in every word / It doesn't matter which you heard."
    • The title song in Grease. "Grease is the word, is the word that you heard."
    • "Pancho and Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt laments how nobody heard the former's dying words.
    • "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen: "Well, everybody's heard about the bird / B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word."
    • The folk song "Home on the Range" mentions how "seldom is heard a discouraging word" in the idyllic setting of the song.
    • "Enter Sandman" by Metallica has the line "Hush, little baby, don't say a word / And never mind that noise you heard."
    • "Stressed Out" by Twenty One Pilots begins with "I wish I found some better sounds no one's ever heard / I wish I had a better voice that sang some better words."
  • emotion/devotion
    • "I Second That Emotion" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
    • "I Will" from The Room (2003):
      When I see your face
      It stirs up my emotions
      Your style and grace
      It inspires my devotion
    • The chorus of "Ocean Soul" by Nightwish begins with "Losing emotion / Finding devotion."
    • "Faith" by George Michael:
      Oh, but I need some time off from that emotion
      Time to pick my heart up off the floor
      Oh, when that love comes down without devotion
      Well, it takes a strong man baby, but I'm showing you the door
    • "If I Only Had a Heart" from The Wizard of Oz has the line "Just to register emotion, jealousy, devotion."
  • touch/much
    • "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli has the rhyme "You'd be like heaven to touch / I wanna hold you so much."
    • The pop standard "Unchained Melody" rhymes "I've hungered for your touch" with "and time can do so much."
    • The final verse of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen begins with "I did my best, it wasn't much / I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch."
    • "That Don't Impress Me Much" by Shania Twain: "That don't impress me much / So you got the brains, but have you got the touch?"
    • In The Year Without a Santa Claus, the Snow Miser and the Heat Miser both have a line in their respective musical numbers describing what happens to the things they touch followed by a boastful "I'm too much!"

    Non-English examples 
  • German: Herz (heart) / Schmerz (pain). "Herzschmerz" even became a kind of German trope for overly sentimental songs, poems and other media. Singer Heinz-Rudolf Kunze, a bit ashamed of slowing turning into the former (from an indie singer) once did a poetry slam with his audience to find different rhymes: März (March), Scherz (jest), Sterz (butt, mostly of birds), Kerz' (candl'), Nerz (mink)...To the best of knowlegde, nobody suggested the German Qwertz keyboard yet.
    • Another common rhyme in German is Liebe (love) / Triebe (urges, drives, also shoots (of plants)). The poet Arno Holz famously said early in the 20th century that the first to rhyme "Liebe" and "Triebe" was a genius, but the fiftieth to do so was a cretin. About half a century later poet and satirist Robert Gernhardt countered this by saying that the first man to rhyme "Liebe" and "Triebe" was a decent craftsman, but nothing more, but the one who does it for the fiftieth time and manages to write an original verse is a real genius.
    • Gernhardt also pointed out the popularity of Sonne (sun) / Wonne (delight, bliss) and Brust (breast, chest) / Lust (pleasure, joy, delight, lust).
    • Definitely Kuss (kiss)/Schluss (end) is missing from the list, otherwise one couldn't write a decent Break-Up Song.
  • Swedish: dig/mig ("you/me"), hjärta/smärta ("heart/pain"). Like its German counterpart, "hjärta-smärta" is also often used to refer to the genre of sentimental, unoriginal ballads as a whole.
  • Russian: Любовь/кровь ("love"/"blood"). Nowadays only notoriously bad pop music still uses it.
    • {Romeo and Juliet}'s Russian translation even uses this as an adaptation of the "love/dove" one.
  • French: amour/toujours ("love/always") and similar to Swedish, toi/moi ("you/me") That latter one can also be rhymed with a whole lot of other words, particularly joie (joy) and voix (voice)
  • Portuguese: mim/fim/assim ("me/end/this way"), agora/hora/embora/fora ("now/time, hour/away/out") along with some present tense verbs in the third person (e.g.chora [cries], adora [loves], mora [resides]), and beijo/desejo ("kiss/desire") are extremely common. Also, amor/dor/calor/flor ("love/pain/heat/flower"). Amigo ("friend") will almost always be rhymed with comigo/contigo ("with me"/"with you").
    • Similarly to Spanish, rhyming two verbs with the same conjugation is a far too common trick. Additionally, verbs ending in -er (e.g. esquecer/ver/dizer, "forget"/"see"/"say") can easily rhyme with você ("you").
    • Jesus/luz/cruz ("Jesus"/"light"/"cross") is used extensively in Gospel music.
  • Spanish: canción/corazón ("song/heart"), amor/dolor ("love/pain"). quiero/muero ("I want"/"I die"), diferente/gente ("different"/"people"), contigo/amigo ("with you"/"friend"), mano/hermano ("hand"/"friend"), Also, since verbs only have so many endings, it's really simple to rhyme them; for example, a common rhyme is amar/soñar ("to love"/"to dream"). Another common "trick" is to simply use the diminutive of the word: all feminine words rhyme and all masculine words do too. It's usual to rhyme "bonito" ("pretty") whith the diminutive of any masculine word
  • Hebrew:
    • In Hebrew both ancient and modern there are two plural endings, -im and -ot. Since the final syllable (at least in modern and Sephardic Hebrew) is accented 90% of the time, and the plural endings are entire syllable rimes, in many Hebrew songs there are incredibly long stretches of ‘rhyming’ lyrics, to the point that it is considered an easy way out. This applies to many prayers as well, as in the G'vurot prayer: "mekhaye metim berakhamim rabim, somekh noflim verofei kholim wumatir asurim." Among people who are more familiar with the techniques used in poetry abhor this kind of rhyming, known as homeoteleuton, or, in Hebrew, kharuz dikduki (‘grammatical rhyme’). A half-decent way to make this acceptable would be at least to make sure that the consonant beforehand is the same (noflim—kholim is somehow acceptable, metim—rabim is not).
    • Since Hebrew vocabulary, like all Semitic languages, is made up from triconsonantalnote  roots fitting into a template of vowels and affixes between and around themnote , there are many words that rhyme with each other, most notably verbs. A good Hebrew rhyme would usually rely on words from different lexical categories (e.g. verbs and adjectives) or creative near-rhymes instead.
  • Like Spanish, Polish has flexion, meaning that endings carry gramatical information, hence a lot of verbs in the same form will rhyme, eg. "rymuje/kreskuje". Unlike Spanish, Polish inflects nouns and adjectives, too, broadening the rhyme pool.

Alternative Title(s): Stock Rhyme

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