And I Know It

I love The Beatles. I do. But, I don’t spend much time listening to songs written before Rubber Soul. And for good reason, I’ll argue. 

Last month, I was lucky enough to see Paul McCartney in concert. The show was a dream come true, and Sir Paul played with all the energy and enthusiasm of a man half his age. But, during his nearly three hour set, one song caught my attention (and triggered my cynicism, too). 

“Love Me Do” was The Beatles’s debut single. Released in England in 1962, it reached #17 on the UK Singles Chart. When it was released in the States in April of 1964, it hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Teenyboppers and Beatlemaniacs swooned to “Love Me Do.” What’s not to like about it? It’s catchy, up-tempo, and fun. It even has a great harmonica solo! It’s easy to sing along to, largely, I think, because of the simplicity of the lyrics and rhyme scheme. I realized though — even as I sang along with thousands and thousands of other concertgoers — that the song is completely illogical; it’s little more than a teenage nursery rhyme. I understand formulaically why “Love Me Do” was a hit for The Beatles, but artistically I think it’s one of their worst songs. It’s certainly not something songwriters should try to emulate or recreate.    

I mean, what does it even mean to “love me do?” Surely, it’s meant as a command: as in do love me. But, such word reversal is most at home in the midst of some Shakespearean sonnet. Shakespeare gets a pass because of the complexity of his poetry and the masterful way he uses linguistic inversion as a highly stylized and intentional metrical device. “Love Me Do” isn’t deserving of such Shakespearean-license. “Love me do” is a nonsensical phrase, and it strikes me the more I think about it as spontaneous yet lazy writing; it’s just a silly rhyming trick.

Allow me to speculate further: Paul and John wanted to write a love song, right. So, they started with “I love you” as the foundational end-line phrase. They must have worked backward from there. There is no way Paul or John bothered with a rhyming dictionary as they impulsively scribbled down this saccharine (if not woefully immature) masterpiece. “You” is one of the easiest words to rhyme in the English language. Hundreds of words rhyme with you: blue, knew, flew, tattoo, undo, breakthrough, avenue. The list goes on and on. But, I don’t think Paul and John struggled very hard to find a more sensical rhyme. (Anyone who has seen all eight hours of the Get Back documentary can attest to the dynamic duo’s Dada approach to songwriting, even later in their careers). Somewhere in the hasty process of writing down lines that rhymed with “I love you,” “love me do” came out. Voila! A framing hook. 

Hold on. I’m almost done… I’ll just add that rhyming “you” with “love me do” feels like a swing and a miss, or, dare I say, a miscue! 

I smiled quizzically later that night, humming along to “Love Me Do” back at my hotel after the show. Were John and Paul being cheeky or naive? Or, more likely, were they just trying to write a hit and weren’t worried too much about the grammatical illogic of a phrase like “love me do?” They probably thought the line was funny! It certainly makes me laugh. 

I spent much of my artistic energy as a young songwriter trying desperately not to rhyme. I wasn’t trying to write “Love Me Do.” An admirer of modern, postmodern, and avant-garde poetry, rhyme was an anathema, a tool of the past bearing the insignia of conformity. Most of the songs I write now, though, revel in rhyme. More and more I’ve grown to understand and appreciate the utility of rhyme in songwriting and the radically paradoxical freedom it endows in its constraint. Sure, rhyme can be embarrassingly sophomoric as in “Love Me Do,” but more often, it becomes a vehicle to style and originality.  

The best analysis of rhyme I’ve ever read is Adam Gopnik’s recent New Yorker essay “The Rules of Rhyme.” Reviewing Levin Becker’s book What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language, Gopnik identifies two approaches to rhyme in poetry and music: True Rhymers and Tumble Rhymers. 

True Rhymers revel in the highbrow, strict, conservative world of straight rhyme. “Do, you, true,” a la The Beatles’s “Love Me Do” being one example. Songs coming out of the Brill Building in the fifties, most of early Motown, standards written by Sammy Cahn, or most traditional show tunes from the likes of Stephen Sondheim would be other examples from the True Rhyme catalog. 

Tumble Rhymers, conversely, are faithful to slant rhyme; they are far more invested in the sonic nuances of dialect and in the playful ways words can be paired together to represent the beautiful imperfections of speech. Emily Dickinson was a master of tumble or slant rhyme. But so are Kanye, Lou Reed, Kendrick Lamar, and Randy Newman. Personally, I find songwriting committed absolutely to true or straight rhyme mostly boring. It’s predictable. I am more excited and surprised by the witty innovation of rhymes that work only because of the way they’re delivered — the power of intonation mixed with timbre layered in mood. Tumble Rhymers are cool because they sculpt language, because they rhyme with moxie and pluck. 

When I am writing a song with rhyme, sometimes the straight, true rhyme serves the song. But most of the time I am looking for a slant rhyme that moves the song into an interesting place; I’m always looking for a word that no one sees coming (not even me). As Gopnik pointedly notes in his essay, “rhyme is a self-imposed constraint, and you get to choose your handcuffs.” Sure, writing a song with rhyme can be restraining, but writing within established boundaries can lead to incredible breakthroughs. Especially when you’re willing to bend the rules.

Gopnik’s right when he proclaims that rhyming makes language matter. So, as you wade through the ocean of words trying to write a song, seek words that shock, surprise, illuminate, beguile, and charm. Rhyme words that no one has ever rhymed before (even though they probably have; you’ve just never heard the song). Trust: what matters more than the perfection of rhyme is the impression and emotional truthiness of the sound. So please, don’t let rhyme get in the way of the song itself, and never let rhyme commandeer the process either. And remember, it’s okay to tumble your way to the truth.