Feminine rhyme in the lyrics of The Mountain Goats
John Darnielle has been called, in a much-quoted honorific from New York magazine, Americaâs âbest non-hip-hop lyricist.â A fair point, but I think such praise indicates a misapprehension of both rock lyrics and hip-hop lyrics. They have different goals, different conventions, and ultimately theyâre entirely different art forms.
(Iâm using the term ârockâ loosely here to indicate âguitar-driven melodic pop music,â not ârockâ as in âyour dadâs ripped jeans and men with blonde highlightsâ)
To wit: rock lyrics donât have to rhyme. They often do, but itâs not actually a requirement. Iâve seen JD mention on Twitter and at shows how much he hates a lazy rhyme, and I agree. A lazy rhyme is worse than a non-rhyme, to me. Have you ever heard a song on the radio that youâve never heard before, and you know what the next lyric will be because theyâve telegraphed the rhyme? Thatâs not only annoying, it also weakens the emotional impact, because it gives the impression that they words were chosen for the easy rhyme, not because they were the best word for that line.
Most rhymes in the aforementioned non-hip-hop music are masculine rhymes, as opposed to feminine rhymes. (These terms come to us from the linguistic idea of gender, not human gender.) Masculine rhyme is when the lines end on stressed syllables that rhyme, like: Poetry is for nerds/Who cares about words. Both lines end in stresses, and they rhyme.
Feminine rhyme, also known as double rhyme, is when the words rhyme by their stressed penultimate syllable and unstressed final syllable. Examples include: Keeping/weeping or power/tower. It can spread over multiple words, too: see me/free me, or nowhere/go there.
Presented herewith are some of my favorite uses of feminine rhyme in Mountain Goats songs, and what I think they accomplish in the music. To me, feminine rhyme always sounds like something inevitable happening. The long-stacked dominoes finally falling into place, the lens snapping into focus and everything coming clear. Itâs so satisfying, even when the words are bleak, and it thematically links to the doom in a lot of Mountain Goats songs: our undoing has already been set in motion, by our prior actions or by a vengeful god, and nothing we can do will prevent it. Thereâs a pattern to the universe that we often canât see, but when we can, it brings a terrible clarity.
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