The three best lyrical rhyme bombs of all time

Ever hear a song lyric and do an audio double take? Something that’s unexpected, a little bit weird and just incredibly satisfying in the way it beautifully rhymes.

I’m calling them rhyme bombs. Here are my top three and the stories behind the songs:

Rhyme bomber 1: Mariah Carey
Song: Touch My Body
Released: February 2008, Island Records

Mariah is well-known for her songwriting prowess. And she doesn’t just churn out any old lyrics either; her use of literary devices in hit pop songs has been documented in a quite sublime Twitter thread. It’s a mash-up of all things high- and low-brow, literati meets pop royalty, and includes examples of Mariah’s penchant for juxtaposition, which is at the core of 2008’s Touch My Body. 

The lead single from Maz’s eleventh studio album E=MC2, this track is quite the unholy lattice of simpering seduction interspersed with all-out threats against infringing on her privacy.

I’m just going to a toga party, respect my privacy

On the one hand, she promises to “hug your body tighter than my favourite jeans” (and who wouldn’t want that), but in the next breath she warns: “I best not catch this flick on YouTube.” Presumably if that happened, she’d be squeezing the oxygen out of you like a boa constrictor in 501s.

In the third verse she lobs in this casual, effortless five-syllable rhyme bomb: 

“'Cause if you run your mouth and brag about this secret rendezvous

I will hunt you down

'Cause they be all up in my business like a Wendy interview

But this is private, between you and I”

Note: The “Wendy” in question is Wendy Williams, host of the eponymous talk show. Five months before Touch My Body was released, Wendy did interview Mariah and asked the somewhat pointed question, “To be as creative as you are, you’ve got to have yourself as the centre of the universe. Is that true?” Mariah’s response: “You’ve gotta give out what you wanna get back.” Mic drop.

Rhyme bomber 2: Carly Simon
Song: You’re So Vain
Released: November 1972, Elektra Records

Rewinding 36 years from Mariah’s confidentiality threats takes us to 1972, the year Carly Simon released You’re So Vain. The track reached number one in multiple countries and is ranked by many as one of the greatest songs of all time. Not surprising, as it includes two top-drawer rhyme moments including the wonderful opening lines of the third verse:

Well I hear you went up to Saratoga

And your horse naturally won

Then you flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia

To see the total eclipse of the sun

But it’s the stunning triple rhyme bomb in the very first verse, ending in the absolutely wild “gavotte,” that marks out this song as something special. Gavotte, as you well know, is a moderate tempo French folk dance created by the Gavot people of the Pays de Gap region in the 1690s:

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht

Your hat strategically dipped below one eye

Your scarf it was apricot

You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte

As for how “gavotte” made its way into the lyrics, Simon revealed in 2012 that she had the chorus of the song nailed and written down, but it took over a year for the verses to come together. She saw the now-mythical egomaniac arrive at a party at her sister’s house and check himself out in the mirror while someone remarked: “He looks like he’s walking onto a yacht.”

How to walk into a party, step 1

Of course, this was more than two decades pre-Google so Simon couldn’t surreptitiously look up “what rhymes with yacht” on her phone, but she does fess up: “It rhymed with what I needed it to rhyme with. He’s gavotting because that’s what a pretentious, vain man would do. But he’s not at the French court, he’s at my sister’s house.”

Note: The identity of the self-obsessed lothario who is the subject of Simon’s smackdown has been much debated. She even teasingly released one-letter clues over the years so we know their name includes E, A and R.

In 2015 she confirmed that the second verse was about Warren Beatty - and witheringly noted that he thinks the entire song is about him (how vain indeed) - but she left the door open on who exactly is at the party watching themselves do the folk dance shuffle through one eye.

Rhyme bomber 3: Lauryn Hill
Song: Ex-Factor
Released: December 1998, Ruffle House Records

Fast forward 26 years to 1998. This was the year of B*Witched, Boyzone and Cher’s Believe, which hogged number one for seven weeks, shifted 1.8m copies and introduced a new generation to auto-tune. 

But it wasn’t all cheesy pop and uplifting comeback anthems that year. Lauryn Hill of Fugees fame released Ex-Factor, the second single from her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. In it she laments the state of her relationship, searching for meaning and questioning herself, radiating pain, longing and frustration. In lyrics that some saw as directed at former Fugees member Wyclef Jean, she asks:

Tell me who I have to be (who I have to be)

To get some reciprocity

See, no one loves you more than me (more than me)

And no one ever will (no one ever will, yeah)

Ress-ip-ross-itee

“Am I not enough for you to love me back?” she asks in a chorus that has resonated with millions. No one has a greater love than Lauryn and no one has before or since rhyme bombed “reciprocity” to such devastating effect - and no one ever will.

100,000 unread emails and zero regrets: New ways to think about email marketing

I recently hit a significant personal milestone. The little red bubble on my phone by the email icon ticked over into six digits. Yes, that’s 100,000 emails in my Gmail inbox that I haven’t opened.

Not only have I not opened them, I haven’t read them, clicked on a link, put them in a folder, starred them or deleted them. I haven’t even considered assigning them to a label or category or colour code. And of course I haven’t replied, forwarded or unsubscribed.

I know that devotees of inbox zero will be aghast and may even be coming out in a rash right now just from a cursory glance at this: 

Inbox 100k

How could I? Does it not annoy me? How can I sleep at night for crying out loud?

The answer is that this number causes me zero consternation. I created my Gmail account in 2004 and if anything, as the red bubble counter ticked up towards 100k in recent weeks I’ve been enjoying the mild anticipation that came with approaching six figures. (Anything counts as a hobby in these unprecedented times you understand.)

And - even if it took just an optimistic three seconds to delete/file/tag each email - I would have wasted spent three-and-a-half days of my life just to see a zero on a screen.

Here are three ways to think differently about email as both a (marketing) sender and a human recipient.

 1. Email as a way to get and keep brand awareness

Were those 100,000 emails a complete waste of time? Many of them will have been automated, but even those involve some level of human effort to get them set them up and fired into my inbox. 

Well no they weren’t – and the reason is because I looked at them all. Because my inbox is personal and there is important stuff in there, I scan the sender name and subject line of every email I receive.

Even if the email you sent me hasn’t been opened or clicked, I have still taken a millisecond or two to see your brand name and what you’ve put in the subject line. In that tiny moment – even if I take no action – there is still a little moment of consideration and brand recognition.

Actual decision-making process of an inbox scanner

What’s happening in the brain of the inbox scanner? Likely a rapid weighing up of a few factors including:

• Do I know who you are?

• What’s your email about?

• Based on what I know about you and what the subject line tells me, is it worth my time to stop scanning and open?

For me, the answer was no over 100,000 times, but I still saw that brand or person and took a moment to connect them with their email subject. There was a small slice of share of mind built up more than 100,000 times over years in some instances.

2. The email inbox as a search engine

If “inbox scanning” is what maintains brand awareness, then it’s using the inbox as a search engine that happens lower down the funnel.

Let’s say one day I decide I need a new lamp. Habitat springs to mind because I get their emails as a regular reminder of their existence and I know they make lamps. I search for “habitat” in my inbox and see they emailed me yesterday and they have a sale on. Next thing you know, I’ve ordered a lamp.

How to buy a lamp

Of course, it’s even better when there’s an exclusive offer for people on the email list like this example from COS. If I needed some minimalist garbs when this arrived or found it through a later inbox search, then this would probably get me spending:

How to buy minimalist garbs

3. The email newsletter subscription is mightier than the click

As Ann Handley points out, your inbox is the last communication channel that’s controlled by you and not an algorithm. It’s personal and it’s intimate.

If you (as a marketer or otherwise) are invited into someone’s inbox, that’s significant – and even more so as retargeting cookies become a thing of the past.

In the examples above I probably didn’t invite these brands in – I either bought something once and now they email me with more things to buy, or I gave them my email address in exchange for a discount code for something I was already going to buy.

So while it’s OK (and to be expected) if your audience doesn’t open your emails if you’re trying to sell them something right off the bat, it’s less OK if you’re genuinely trying to engage them in the long term – and that’s what an email newsletter is for.

Tell me something good: A Sage Advice newsletter sign-up page

Over at Sage Advice, email newsletter subscribers are our most engaged audience and that translates all the way down to dollars and pounds.

In fact, subscribers typically spend three times more than people who just download gated content and that’s because the newsletter delivers something valuable and timely every time. It’s for life, not just for shopping.

So, I have no regrets over the unread emails and nor should you – unless your newsletter is languishing in there of course.

An inbox postscript

Less than two months after hitting 100,000, today my inbox looks like this:

Progress

Bring on email one million.