Friday, October 23, 2009

Rhymes of the Times

People talk about moon/June as an overused rhyme in songs. I don't actually know any examples, but I would guess that the late 40s and 50s could be called the moon/June era. I like the idea that other eras could be named similarly. There was a schemes/dreams era around the Great Depression. There was a self/else era beginning in the late 60s. Maybe between moon/June and self/else there was a love/of era.

Comments? Criticisms? Examples? Elaborations?

5 comments:

AJP Crown said...

Funny/Money/ in the 80s? (Money, money, money, Isn't funny, In a rich man's world.) That was written by Swedes: ABBA.

Formal analysis of great works of architecture is often done by describing adjacent structural bays using the symbols A, A', B, B', C etc, and seeing if the whole thing forms an interesting rhythm of some kind. So I'm looking for an opportunity to design a facade for some Swedes in the ratio ABBA.

AJP Crown said...

I would guess that the late 40s and 50s could be called the moon/June era.
Wikipedia has this:
June Moon is a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story "Some Like Them Cold," about a love affair that loses steam before it ever gets started...The original Broadway production opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 9, 1929

The latter title seems to be from a nursery rhyme called
Pease Porridge Hot.
Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old;
Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

The first use of Some Like It Hot was as the title of a 1939 comedy starring Bob Hope.

Nijma said...

self/else? That doesn't rhyme. Maybe it was self/elf. Herself the Elf? No, that was an 80's toy. There was "Georgy Girl" but the rhyme was self/shelf, and that didn't even make it to number one.

Like it or not, I'm afraid the biggest poetic contribution of the 60's was the Fish Cheer.

empty said...

No, there are well-known songs that rhyme self with else.

What is the Fish Cheer?

empty said...

Oh, that fish cheer.

About Me

I am a professor of mathematics. (I began calling myself "Empty" or Ø when hanging around at blogs, because I am somewhat fixated on the empty set. Students and colleagues know that I can be a bit of an ancient mariner about it.)