It is drilled into us by the first Sesame Street, Wiggles, or Raffi tunes that we hear: Songs are supposed to rhyme. And popular music almost always falls into line with that notion. Rhyme schemes might get a bit complex at times, but, for the most part, rhymes are still a major component of the vast majority of the songs with vocals you’re likely to hear.
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As a matter of fact, because of the way your ears and brain are trained, you might not even realize there are some songs you’ve likely heard over the years that have no rhymes at all. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a brief list of some of these songs. We tried to be strict about it, which means we didn’t consider a song unless there were zero rhymes involved. And we also looked for songs where the lyrics were involved in the melody, rather than spoken-word pieces that might utilize free-verse.
Those are the rules of this little exercise. Let’s see how many of these five songs you recognize, and whether you realized they go against the rhyming grain.
1. “Moonlight in Vermont” (Recorded by Many Artists, Written by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn)
This standard has been sung by some of the greatest vocalists of all time, including Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, and Sam Cooke. There’s a lot going on here besides just a lovely snowdrift of a melody and a laundry list of the scenery you can expect to see in the Green Mountain State.
The story goes that Blackburn, the lyricist, was churning out lyrics for Suessdorf’s music when he realized that none of his lines were rhyming. That sparked him to keep it going all the way to the end. In addition, whether he did it consciously or not, the syllables in each three-line verse hew pretty closely to the haiku format.
2. “America” (Recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, Written by Paul Simon)
In this case, Paul Simon was completely aware of his non-rhyming lines as he composed this masterpiece found on the 1968 album Bookends. The lyrics tell the story of a bus trip across the country taken by two lovers, one that starts out benignly enough with scenery whipping by and games and conversation to pass the time. But as the song progresses, the narrator starts to reveal the malaise inside him, a feeling, as the title suggests, that’s shared by his many of his countrymates: Kathy, I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping / I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.
3. “At This Moment” (Recorded by Billy Vera & the Beaters, Written by Billy Vera)
Vera was a journeyman musician who had given up on hitting it big when a song he’d recorded several years before was used in a television show. That show was none other than Family Ties, one of the ‘80s’ biggest sitcoms, and that song, “At This Moment,” became a No. 1 hit because of that exposure. Years later, a fan wrote Vera a letter and mentioned that his song was like “Moonlight in Vermont” in that it didn’t rhyme. The funny thing: Vera had no idea this was the case while he was writing it. By unconsciously writing how he thought his narrator would react in the desperate situation of trying to win back his ex, he eliminated any rhymes and spoke from the heart.
4. “Fields of Gold” (Recorded and Written by Sting)
This one might trick you into thinking that it rhymes. After all, the verses each contain a concise four lines, and the title shows up at the end of each verse. The melody even features that lilting quality to it, where the title resolves the chord sequence. It creates a sing-songy feeling that you tend to associate with a rhyming song. The fact that the second and fourth line of each verse essentially repeat the same phrases over and over again also creates that aural illusion. But listen to it again. At no point do Sting’s bucolic musings actually form a rhyme.
[RELATED: How Did Sting Get His Name?]
5. “Killing the Blues” (Recorded by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Written by Roly Salley)
This is as close as we’re going to come to cheating on this list, because there are two parts of the song that might be considered imperfect rhymes. In the second verse, something and nothing sort of mirror each other, sound-wise. The third verse is even closer, with leave you and need to brushing up against a rhyme. But we get to be the judges here, and we’ve decided that “Killing the Blues,” written by musician Roly Salley and made famous by the mesmerizing harmonies of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, doesn’t really rhyme. Which is quite surprising, because in its own hauntingly sad way, it’s quite catchy.
Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for The New Yorker Festival
