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Alliterations
31 August 2014
11.35pm
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Into the Sky with Diamonds
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I’m looking for alliterations in song titles or lyrics (Beatles and solo careers) (repeating letters or sounds).

Example: “Lovely Linda”

Rocky Raccoon, Buffalo Bill and Sexy Sadie have double alliterations as does Silly Love Songs.

 ‘Lifting latches’ (Two of Us)

My faves: “Filling in a ticket in her little white book”  “She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief, quietly turning the back door key”

"Into the Sky with Diamonds" (the Beatles and the Race to the Moon – a history)

1 September 2014
1.35am
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Lovely Linda’s singing Silly Love Songs to Rocky Raccoon, Buffalo Bill and Sexy Sadie while Rita with limitless undying love is filling in a ticket in her little white book, lifting latches, and sitting on a sofa with a sister or two. Then, she goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief, quietly turning the back door key…

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25 March 2015
11.45am
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Ahhh Girl
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@Into the Sky with Diamonds, @Matt Busby posted a good one here https://www.beatlesbible.com/f…..3/#p167914

sitting on the sofa with a sister or two

I hope we can come up with some more.

To confirm what I thought alliteration means, I looked up the definition: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.

Do you want the alike sounds to be from any place in the words instead of just at the beginning?

25 March 2015
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Matt Busby
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Lovely Rita meter maid” and “take  some tea”, while my mind is on that song

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Half of what I say is meaningless...

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25 March 2015
12.22pm
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@Ahhh Girl  I think from any place in the word – as long as it’s a repeating sound.

Come to think of it, “sitting on a sofa with a sister or two” has both the ‘s’ and the ‘t’ as repeating sounds.

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25 March 2015
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Oyster Black Pearl
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Pet Sounds is always (rightly) cited as an influence on Sgt.Pepper, but I’ve always wondered if Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound Of Silence was too? It was certainly “in the air” around that time.

I Am A Rock was a single from the summer of 1966 – it has this great alliteration filled line –

“On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow”

Would have pricked up the ears of any contemporary lyricist? 

 

At last a book about Ringo and drumming.”

 

Ringo Starr And The Beatles Beat

 

 

25 March 2015
3.26pm
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Zig
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Mean Mister Mustard sleeps in the park, shaves in the dark
Saving up to buy some clothes, keeps a ten-bob note up his nose
His sister Pam works in a shop, she never stops…
Takes him out to look at the Queen, only place that he’s ever been, always shouts out something obscene

To the fountain of perpetual mirth, let it roll for all its worth. And all the children boogie.

25 March 2015
6.58pm
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Matt Busby
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Oyster Black Pearl said
Pet Sounds is always (rightly) cited as an influence on Sgt.Pepper, but I’ve always wondered if Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound Of Silence was too? It was certainly “in the air” around that time.

I Am A Rock was a single from the summer of 1966 – it has this great alliteration filled line –

“On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow”

Would have pricked up the ears of any contemporary lyricist?

I’m fairly certain s&g & the Beatles influenced each other.  The Everly brothers definitely influenced both.

The trick, or gift, of writing involves combining meter,internal and external rhyme, hard vowel sounds,  enunciation (Across The Universe is a great example – I especially like the verse with “thoughts meander like the restyled wind inside a letterbox”). And other things. Different writing tips and genres can require different combinations of these aspects.

An example of John using glottal stops (or lack of them) is the song Mother . To me he minimizes the hard sounds, skating through the words like they’re a sheet of ice.

I feel I’ve drifted sufficiently far enough off topic to suggest this particular subject be taken into the musicology forum ;) I’m on the phone and in an..interesting place in the recovery process and can’t be arsed to xpost right now though.

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Oyster Black Pearl

Half of what I say is meaningless...

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25 March 2015
7.05pm
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Matt Busby
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Zig said
Mean Mister Mustard sleeps in the park, shaves in the dark
Saving up to buy some clothes, keeps a ten-bob note up his nose
His sister Pam works in a shop, she never stops…
Takes him out to look at the Queen, only place that he’s ever been, always shouts out something obscene

 

Now see, I took all the time to explicitly exclude rhyming and just highlight alliteration and @Zig comes along and posts this! But right on, man – rhyme and alliteration can work together to create some really exquisite sounding songs…poems..or prose :) but if we’re opening it up to that, I’ll revisit Lovely Rita : lovely Rita meter maid,  may i inquire discreetlY, when are you fREE TO Take some TEA with ME (sorry bold crapped out… Or maybe my fingers are still a bit too shaky to hit the button right on the phone). There’s also an internal rhyme in maid/may/take. Add meter (iambic pentameter, a style they stole from from Shakespeare), pronunciation style (similar to accent but done deliberately) , and a few relatively trite words become a beautiful work of art.

Oh wait, Shakespeare’s out of copyright so I guess it wasn’t stealing.

One of the Beatles’ many special talents was the ability to write songs many of which are great poems if you take away the melody (thus the comparisons to the master Bard). Paul Simon is also a master of this as @oyster black pearl noted above.

Hmm,  I think i like this topic.

:)

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Half of what I say is meaningless...

I feel good in a special way, I'm in love and it's a sunny day

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5 January 2016
1.40pm
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U.C.Nothing
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Matt Busby said
Lovely Rita meter maid” and “take  some tea”, while my mind is on that song

I don’t think it’s an alliteration but the internal rhyming here has always gotten me in a good place…

Luh-vlee Reetuh meetuh maid…

The ‘luh’ sound from Lovely goes wonderfully with the ‘tuh’ sound from both Rita and meter (‘mee-tuh’ the way it was sung)

Then of course the repeated ‘ee’ sound. And the alliteration Meter Maid.

But “Reetuh-Meetuh” was always sterling to me.

They liked the ‘tuh’ sound so much that they repeated it through the end fade.

There’s a lot going on here.

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ewe2

... and in her eyes,  U.C. Nothing ...

5 January 2016
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ewe2
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Matt Busby said
One of the Beatles’ many special talents was the ability to write songs many of which are great poems if you take away the melody (thus the comparisons to the master Bard). Paul Simon is also a master of this as @oyster black pearl noted above.

Hmm,  I think i like this topic.

:)

It’s often hidden in plain sight too, just one example from Rain :

When the sun shines they slip into the shade
And sip their lemonade.

It’s getting that sip in to partner with slip that I particularly like. Consonance and assonance are everywhere in Beatles lyrics, which is all the more impressive for the simplicity of the words.

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7 January 2016
10.16am
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Beatlebug
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Here’s a thread devoted to all types of literary devices in Beatlesongs, including alliterations. We seem to frequently drift to literary devices other than alliterations, such as consonance. 

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