Rhyme & Sound

Rhyme in songwriting is not the same thing as rhyme in poetry, because a listener hears a lyric once, in time, over music. That changes what counts. A perfect rhyme the ear has heard ten thousand times can land flatter than a slant rhyme that keeps the sentence honest, and a rhyme buried mid-line can do more work than the one parked at the end.

The guides below cover the whole territory: the schemes songs actually use, the difference between perfect, slant and near rhyme and when each is the right tool, internal and multisyllabic rhyme, and the specific ways a rhyme announces that it was chosen for the sound rather than the sense.