The Most Common Rhyme In Pop Music, From The Beatles To Bieber
You know a lazy song lyric when you hear it. Thematically trite. Clunky phrasing. Cliched rhymes. Slate writer Ben Blatt has done some deep digging as regards that last issue, and he found that one pair of end-rhymes, in particular, shows up in a staggering number of pop songs from the last 50 years: "do" and "you."
Seems simple, not terribly shocking. Until one considers just how frequently it shows up. It's the go-to rhyming pair for Madonna, Kanye West, and Whitney Houston. But also for The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, U2, and other titans of pop music.
In 1999, the statistical high point of the Do/You pair, it showed up in a full 15 percent of all Billboard Year-End Hot 100 songs. Justin Bieber has used the rhyme in twelve different songs during his short career to date -- while Blatt found that Queen never used a single rhyming pair on more than five different occasions.
"I can't blame someone for using do/you," says Blatt in a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer. "If you make it the centerpiece of all your songs, there may be a problem."
In addition to exploring the frequency of "Do/You," Blatt created interactive rhyme charts showing the change in popularity for 20 different word pairs, as well as a chart showing the favorite rhyme schemes of several dozen major artists.
Blatt talks about why he tackled this subject, and what he's found about trends in rhyming.
