Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Rhyme chime

Have you ever noticed how many songs use the word 'again' as a handy rhyme for pain, rain and all the other things that song-writers like to agonize about, but the singer invariably pronounces it 'agen' so that it doesn't rhyme at all? Lots of songs that I really like do this, so I probably shouldn't be too horrid about the whole thing, but even a wonderful piece of music like Don McLean's "Castles in the Air" is very slightly marred by a sequence of pain/agen/remain/plain.

But on the other hand, the Victor Meldrew song in "The Beast in the Cage" rhymes 'then' with 'again', but John du Prez pronounces 'again' to rhyme with 'rain'.

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