Series Installment #3, Featured: Rick Carnes
Recently, while digging through old files, I came across notes from a lecture I attended twenty years ago at a writers’ conference in Florida. In one session, Rick Carnes, president of the American Songwriters Guild of America, spoke on the topic of rhyme.
I looked up Rick online—to refresh my memory from way back in 2004—and discovered he still serves as the SAG president. He also serves on the executive board of Fair Trade Music International, a nonprofit organization that advocates for music creators in the quest for fair business and governmental practices affecting the music industry. And Rick has been writing songs for more than forty years. His work includes hits recorded by such artists as Dean Martin, Reba McEntire, Alabama, Garth Brooks, and Pam Tillis.
At that long-ago conference, Rick presented a workshop on “The Poetry of Songwriting” to an audience comprised of the poets and songwriters attending the Florida Suncoast Writers Conference. He used the song “Glow Worm” by Johnny Mercer to illustrate some important ideas about rhyme that relate to both poetry and songwriting.
Below, I present a few lines of the song.
(For full lyrics, visit Johnny Mercer – Glow Worm Lyrics | Genius Lyrics.)
Shine little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer
Shine little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer
Lead us lest too far we wander
Love’s sweet voice is calling yonder
Shine little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer
Hey, there don’t get dimmer, dimmer
Light the path below, above
And lead us on to love!
My intent here is to paraphrase some of Rick’s remarks, as preserved in my lecture notes, because so many of his points are as relevant to poetry—rhymed poetry, anyway—as they are to songs.
Classic songs—those that last through time—use colorful ideas and good rhymes that relate to the central concept of the song. Because of its interesting end-rhymes, Johnny Mercer’s “The Glow Worm” will likely be sung and performed for hundreds of years to come. On the other hand, The Beatles’ song “Love Me Do”—a big hit when released because they performed it so well—has trite, unimaginative end-rhymes and is more likely to be forgotten eventually.
I pause to note the analysis above seemed to be the case in 2004. Does it still make sense in 2024? To me it does, but I’m betting there are more than a few readers of this blog who don’t remember either song. Or will argue on behalf of “Love Me Do.”
Rhyme can connect ideas, like the relationship between “too far we wander” and “calling yonder.” But one of the dangerous things about rhymes is that you can box yourself in by using a word that has no, or very few, rhyme choices. You end up with a cliché like desire/fire.
Let’s try this exercise presented by Rick. Take a song [or poem] and circle the last word of each line. Pull that list of words away from the song and see if those words seem very interesting apart from the song.
Rule No. 1 in songwriting, according to Rick, is to use colorful and interesting rhyming words at the end of every line. Rule No. 2 is to use rhyming words that connect to the title. You need to be able to “draw a line” between each line of the song and the title of the song.
Rhyme creates motion. Music moves from tension to release—it starts with dissonance, creates tension, the tension rises, then releases. The whole idea of any kind of art is to create tension then resolve it.
In most modern songs, rhymes are so overworked you can fill in the rhyme before you hear it. A good way to avoid creating trite rhymes is to use a good rhyming dictionary, such as The New Comprehensive Rhyming Dictionary. (Published in 1991, it’s still available.)
Okay, those were some of Rick’s key points. Personally, I found his comments compelling because rhyming is difficult for me. Evidently, this is true for a lot of poets, since so many of us elect to write primarily in free verse. Of those who choose to write rhymed poems, I find few who do it well. The fact remains: just because it’s difficult to create a poem with good rhyme is not a good reason to quit trying. Thus, occasionally, I do make the effort, though few of my rhyming poems have been successful, and most I’ll never set loose on innocent readers.
I go back to Rick’s exercise to circle, or list, the last word of each line to determine if the rhymes are “colorful and interesting” or trite and worn out. If we do this with the Beatles’ song, “Love Me Do,” as Rick suggested, we get this:
do
you
true
do
How exciting. Now try it with just eight lines of “The Glow Worm”:
glimmer
swimmer
weevil
primeval
darken
sparkin’
so
glow
Much better. This idea of making a list of the end words seems to be a good, quick way to separate the colorful from the clichéd. I tried this with some of my own rhymed poems, including my best, “Writer’s Block,” which uses some slant rhymes, or near rhymes. Here’s a sample of the good, the bad, and the dubious:
whine
pine
hues
shoes
choose
rouge
loneliness
magnolias
against
hairpins
rendition
expedition
shouting
outing
whirlpools
rules
find
bind
Titanic
panic
Not terrible, all in all—but I think I’ll keep my free verse poet job.
Nashville songwriter Rick Carnes is the president of The Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), the nation’s oldest and most active organization run by and for songwriters. For many years prior to his becoming its president, Rick served SGA as an officer and as a member of the Nashville Steering Committee, representing SGA on numerous panels regarding legislative, contractual, technological, and legal issues affecting songwriters. Over the past decade, he has increasingly become the recognized spokesperson for songwriter issues on Capitol Hill.
Richard Allen Taylor, Poet 