Rhyme and meter are the mechanics of lyric writing. Rhyme connects lines by sound; meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that gives a line its rhythm. Together they make a lyric feel musical before it even has a melody.
Types of rhyme
- Perfect rhyme - identical vowel and ending consonant sounds: night / light, stone / alone. Strong, satisfying, final - and easily predictable.
- Family rhyme - the vowels match and the final consonants belong to the same family (b/d/g, p/t/k, f/s/sh, m/n). Time / line, cup / luck. Sounds natural when sung, and opens up far more options.
- Additive and subtractive rhyme - one word adds or loses a consonant: free / sleep, go / gold.
- Assonance rhyme - only the vowels match: home / alone / road. The rhyme of modern pop and hip-hop.
- Consonance rhyme - only the consonants match: bend / band.
- Internal rhyme - rhymes inside a line, not just at the end. The engine of rap.
- Multisyllabic rhyme - rhyming two or more syllables at once: "golden hour" / "holding power". Complex and satisfying, central to hip-hop.
Perfect rhyme is not better than the others. A lyric made only of perfect rhymes can sound like a greeting card. Mixing types sounds natural and gives you far more words to choose from.
Rhyme schemes
Label line endings with letters - lines that rhyme share a letter.
- AABB - couplets. Simple, punchy, sing-song.
- ABAB - alternating. Balanced, flowing.
- ABCB - only the second and fourth lines rhyme. Relaxed, conversational, very common.
- AAAX - three rhymes and a line that breaks the pattern. The fourth line stands out - a great place for the title.
Rhyme schemes create expectation. Breaking one at the right moment - leaving a line unrhymed when the listener expects a rhyme - makes that line jump out.
Stress
Every word of more than one syllable has a natural stress: to-day? No - to-day. Ta-ble. Be-fore. In a sung line, stressed syllables should fall on strong beats or longer notes. When they do not, the line sounds awkward, however good the words are.
Say every line aloud, exaggerating the natural stresses. Then check that the melody agrees.
Metric feet
Poetry describes rhythm in units called feet - small patterns of stressed (DUM) and unstressed (da) syllables.
- Iamb - da-DUM. a-way, to-night. The most natural rhythm of English speech.
- Trochee - DUM-da. ba-by, heart-ache. Strong and falling; many choruses open this way.
- Spondee - DUM-DUM. heart-break, dead end. Two equal stresses - heavy, emphatic, stops the flow.
- Dactyl - DUM-da-da. beau-ti-ful, hold-ing on. Rolling, waltz-like.
- Anapest - da-da-DUM. in the night, un-der-stand. Galloping, forward-moving.
You do not need to write in strict meter - songs are far looser than formal poetry. But knowing these patterns lets you diagnose why a line feels clumsy, and choose rhythms deliberately: a run of iambs feels conversational; a spondee in the middle of a line stops the listener dead on the words that matter.
Matching lines
Lines that share a melody should share a rhythm. If verse two has more syllables, or stresses in different places, than verse one, the melody will not fit. Count syllables and mark stresses on matching lines.
Rhyme and meaning
Never let the rhyme choose the meaning. If you are writing a line only because it rhymes, the listener will hear it. Better an honest near-rhyme than a perfect rhyme that says nothing.
Do this now
- Write four lines in each of AABB, ABAB and ABCB on the same subject.
- Rewrite one perfect rhyme in a verse as a family rhyme and one as an assonance rhyme. Which sounds most natural sung?
- Mark the stresses in your chorus. Move any stressed syllable that falls on a weak beat.
- Put a spondee on the most important two words of your chorus.