Pretenders – "Talk of the Town" (1981)

Oh, but it’s hard to live by the rules

I never could and still never do

The rules and such never bothered you

You call the shots and they follow [ . . . ]

A “mind rhyme” – also known as a “subverted rhyme” or a “teasing rhyme” – is a rhyme that exists only in the mind of the listener.

But it didn’t get there by accident.  It got there because a poet put it there.

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Here’s the first verse of “Sweet Violets,” a song on the first Mitch Miller & The Gang album – which I listened to about a thousand times when I was a kid:

There once was a farmer who took a young miss

In back of the barn where he gave her a

Lecture on horses and chickens and eggs

And told her that she has such beautiful

Manners that suited a girl of her charms

A girl that he'd like for to take in his

Washing and ironing, and then if she did

They could get married and raise lots of

Sweet violets, sweeter than all the roses!

You think the farmer in “Sweet Violets” is going to give the young miss a kiss (instead of a lecture), compliment her on her beautiful legs (instead of her manners), take her in his arms (instead of her taking in his washing), and marry her so they can raise lots of kids (instead of sweet violets).

Mitch Miller & The Gang

But the songwriter is rope-a-doping you.  Instead of giving you the rhyming words that you anticipate – because those words would not only complete rhyming couplets but also make sense in context – you get something entirely different.

Click here to listen to “Sweet Violets.”  Or you can call me and I’ll sing it for you over the phone.  (I memorized the words to that song when I was about ten years old, and I will never forget them.)

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The lyrics from today’s featured song – the Pretenders’ 1981 hit, “Talk of the Town,” which was written by Chrissie Hynde – contain a pure mind rhyme:

The rules and such never bothered you

You call the shots and they follow

Hynde leaves out the “you” that you anticipate will follow “follow” and complete a rhyming couplet.  Unlike the “Sweet Violets” songwriter, she doesn’t replace “you” with a nonrhyming word – she simply stretches “follow” so its fills the space where “you” might have gone.  (Instead of “FOL-low YOU, she sings “FOL-LOW.”  There are two trochaic feet in each case, but there’s no unstressed syllable in the second example – just two stressed syllables.) 

Let’s look at the lines that precede and follow those lines:

Oh, but it’s hard to live by the rules

I never could and still never do

The rules and such never bothered you

You call the shots and they follow

I watch you still from a distance, then go

Back to my room, you’ll never know

The listener’s anticipation of hearing “follow you” instead of just “follow” at the end of the fourth line is heightened by the fact that not only does the previous line end in a word that rhymes with “you,” but so do the two lines before that one.  (“Rules” and “you” don’t constitute a perfect rhyme, but they’re close enough to make the absence of that final “you” more noticeable.)

Note also that by allowing the fourth line to end with “follow” instead of “you,” Hynde sets up rhymes with the next two lines (which end with “go” and “know”).

Think about it.  Hynde has gotten two rhymes for the price of one by leaving out “you” after “follow.”  She’s created actual rhymes with “follow,” “go,” and “know” – but she’s created an implied rhyme with the omitted “you.”

Well played, Chrissie Hynde – well played.

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You may think I’m missing the forest for the trees here.  

Actually, I’m missing the forest for the tree (singular) – after all, I’m talking about one word . . . or, to be more accurate, one non-word.

There’s a lot more I could say about “Talk of the Town.”  For example, there’s its gentle, wistful tone, which contrasts sharply with Hynde’s darker and harder-hitting songs (like the scornful “Pack It Up”) – it turns out that Chrissie has a soft side after all.

Chrissie Hynde

But it’s time for me to get off my Pretenders horse for a while – I’ve been riding it pretty hard, and it could probably benefit from a nice, long rest.

After a few weeks have passed, I’ll come to back to the Pretenders and do some summing up.  I’ve got two or three top-shelf Chrissie Hynde songs in my back pocket, but I want to take some time to think about them before I feature those songs on 2 or 3 lines – I want to do them justice.

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Click here to listen to “Talk of the Town,” which was a top-ten single in the UK in the spring of 1980.  It was released on the Pretenders II album in the summer of 1981.

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon: