As I typed in the title of this post, I went back into the archives and saw that rhyming had already earned its own “That’s Bullshit” post.  So I named this “Part 2,” but it’s not really a sequel.  It’s not even a gritty reboot of a franchise, though I do appreciate those.  Disirregardless, I shall press on.

Let’s talk about the word “again.”  It rhymes with “ten” and many other common words in this glorious yet frustrating language we call English, right?.  Do you know what it doesn’t rhyme with?  “Main,” “train,” or “Bahrain.”  Yet that rhyme pops up in song lyrics and poems all the time.  I get it, it looks like it should rhyme with those words, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t.  For too long, I’ve heard lyrics like, “I’m standing in the rain/And I miss her once again” and just thought to myself, “Oh yeah, we pretend that those words rhyme.”  Why do we let that slide?  It’s not like the real way we pronounce “again” wouldn’t have any words with which to rhyme and so we give it a free pass and let it feast in the -ain/-ane category.  There are plenty of great words there, but we still just hear that non-rhyme and accept it because we’ve been conditioned to think it’s been granted some kind of rhyming bigamy.  Why?  Just because they look like they should rhyme with each other?  That’s not a good enough reason.  We don’t pretend that “laughter” and “slaughter” rhyme, “rough” and “through,” or “show” and “how,” so what’s so special about “again”?  Nothing, and fuck that.  When the singer/writer pronounces the word as “uh-GEN,” then it has to rhyme with the right words.  Anything else, and that’s bullshit.