In a song I wrote recently I was puzzled, not for the first time, about whether to rhyme the line preceding the Title with the Title and, if so, where and how to do it.  These same issues actually come up with any rhyming in a song; rhyming is always a choice.  But the stakes are of course higher with the Title.

Since the Title is usually the most important line in the song, the rhyme will probably be the most important element in how I’m choosing to set the Title up – which often makes the ‘rhyming line’ the second-most important line in the song (if one should choose to rate such unrateable things).

I’ve found that rhyming into the Title is often a really good idea.  A rhyme usually helps punch the main idea across and makes it easier to remember/harder to forget.

There are always exceptions, but rhyming the title line is at least worth considering (unless I’m repeating the Title line itself over and over – that repetition usually makes the rhyming unnecessary, even irritating).

The Chorus of my song in question ends with the title of the song (borrowed from a Kenneth Lornegan movie, one of my favorites): ‘You Can Count On Me‘.

The stresses in the melody of the title line are: You Can Count On Me.  So, in this case, I felt I had three basic choices: 1) Rhyme with ‘Me’ (at the end of the line); 2) Rhyme with ‘Count’ (a word that’s also accented in the melody and additionally is the most important word in the line, meaning-wise); or 3) Don’t rhyme it at all.

I went around and around (and around) with this, trying to figure out which out of all the options I could think of worked ‘best’.  (I’m not even going into the various word options within each rhyming choice, each of which brought a different sound, meaning, and feeling to the Chorus).

I tried every alternative I could think of; it was one of those times where I just kept turning it over and over in my head as I walked around, rode the subway… as well as when I sat with my guitar.

The main thing I was reminded of by this process, very common in songwriting, was that there’s no ‘right’ answer to these kind of very common songwriting choices.  There’s no rule book, no Songwriting Supreme Court or Ultimate Arbiter.  Ultimately they’re judgement calls, based on my personal taste, experience…

These choices are what make the song mine… they might be different from the choice you, or anyone, might make… or they might be the common choice most writers would make. Ultimately it comes down to, ‘It feels better to me this way than it does that way or that way; this is what makes the song work best’.

But doing the due diligence of checking out a lot of alternatives helps me feel much more comfortable with my final choice… which might be the first thing I thought of… or the 20th.

Which choice did I make in ‘You Can Count On Me’?  I did end up being happy with how it sounds. The Chorus now ends with –

It’s the right amount
You Can Count On Me