On the interaction of alliteration with rhythm and metre in popular music

Abstract

A number of scholars have written on characteristics of vocal melody in popular music, but little attention has been paid at the level of phonetic detail. This study argues that the phonetic structure of a melody can contribute in important ways to a song's reception and success, given the ways that listeners react and respond to vocalised melody. This article discusses different ways in which stressed syllables in familiar pop songs alliterate, and it investigates the way these patterns interact rhythmically with metre.

Slanted beats, enchanted communities: Pavement's early phrase rhythm as indie narrative

“…27–8). Its syncopated rhythms are reinforced through what Salley (2011, pp. 418–20) calls place-preserving near alliteration: the two off-beat syllables (’-mmer’ and ‘babe’) both begin with bilabial consonants, and the near alliteration creates a regular pattern of mouth movements that makes the line memorable and further eases listener participation.…”

“… 31 The near alliteration in bar 5 results from ‘migration’, the tendency in singing to move the final consonant of a word to the rhythmic position of the beginning of the following one (Salley 2011, p. 414). …”

After Relativism: Recent Directions in the High Analysis of Low Music

“…Moore is right to complicate and disentangle all those issues of persona and authenticity within the text, let alone among the listeners. There is much analytical work to be done on words in songs – for example, deeper inside rhyme and alliteration (Griffiths and Salley ) – and Moore's presentation of euphonics is useful and suggestive ( SM , p. 114–6).…”

Creativities in Popular Songwriting Curricula: Teaching or Learning?

“…relating to romantic love; most songs rhyme and the words 'sing well', favouring vowelheavy monosyllables and generally avoiding sibilants and plosives (Bennett, 2011;Salley, 2011). Creatively, there is no reason why a student -or any songwriter -should not choose to challenge these statistical norms.…”

“…At postgraduate level we could choose to combine our literary analysis with recent research on the way vowels are used in popular songs (e.g. Salley, 2011). Our analysis class could be lyrics-only, or music and lyrics, or in fact any of the seven Track Imperatives in any combination.…”