by Pat Pattison
I was listening to John Mayer’s album Wildfire and was stopped dead by this line from his song Badge and Gun:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
The line made me feel something. I love when that happens. It’s always a sign that I need to take a closer look – to understand how the line did it – to find any useful tools that might help my students write even better songs. So, in I went.
First, the line is a wonderful, fresh way to say, “I wish I could go back to a younger, easier time.” Here’s a bit more context:
Gimme my badge and gun
Gimme the songs that I once sung
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Of course, the image “badge and gun” works on many levels, but primarily creates a nostalgic look at a young boy dressed in cowboy hat and chaps, pretending to be an old-time sheriff in a dusty town, taming the Wild West. Ah, youth. Pretty cool.
But it’s not only what John Mayer says, it’s the way he says it:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Why does it sound so good? At first glance, it might seem like the line’s energy is a product of the internal rhyme between black and back.
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
But the simple internal rhyme doesn’t begin to explain why this line sounds so attractive. There’s a lot more happening.
Let’s take a closer look. First, at the vowels, other than the internal rhyme.
Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound in non-rhyming stressed syllables, close enough to each other for the connection to be heard.
Listen to the short i (as in it) echo in gimme and kick:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
And the long o (as in go) echoing in those and alone
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
The vowel repetitions create an additional layer of sonic connections. Combined with the internal rhyme, these assonance connections help to knit a small piece of the lovely sonic fabric this line creates.
There’s a lot more vowel activity going on here, in addition to the simple assonance. But it’s a bit more subtle. Look:
Hidden Assonance
Many vowels contain more than one sound. They’re called diphthongs. When two diphthongs share one of their two sounds in common, they create hidden assonance.
Hidden assonance works a lot like the musical concept of voice leading:
…where each musical note transitions to the next in a smooth, harmonious way, moving as few notes as few steps as possible and thus often retaining common tones.
Hidden assonance works with common tones – two different diphthongs sharing one of their sounds in common.
The territory in hidden assonance can be a little slippery, since English vowel pronunciation can vary from country to country, region to region, town to town, even neighborhood to neighborhood. But whatever your vowel pronunciations, whenever you use diphthongs, hidden assonance will come into play. Just use your ears. You’ll hear it.
First, there are the straightforward diphthongs,
oi (as in boy) = long o (as in go) + long ē (as in me)
ou (as in couch) = ä (as in papa) + long ū (as in too)
Some of the long vowels are actually diphthongs too. Take the long a (as in lay) for example. It’s a combination of short ě (as in end) and long ē (as in me). Go ahead, say lay slowly a few times.
l ě ē
See how it works here:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Now say jet and lay slowly. Listen. Can you hear the short ě in jet echo the short ě in lay?
j ě t l ě ē
Pretty neat.
Like long a, long o (as in go) is a diphthong, containing two distinct sounds – short ŏ (as in hot) plus long ū (as in too). As you’ve seen, in
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
there are two long o sounds, those and alone. Both contain ū (as in “too”). Now listen to the vowel sounds in down, the more straightforward diphthong. It contains ä (as in papa) plus ū (as in too). So in
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
you can hear the long ū connecting those, down and alone. Voice leading. Slow them down and listen:
those = th ŏ ū se down =d ä ū n alone = al ŏ ū ne
All three share the long ū in common!
Another one. You know that the long a in lay is a combination of short e (as in end), and long ē (as in me). Now look at the long i in nights. It’s a combination of ä (as in “papa”) and long ē (as in me). So both lay and nights share long ē, connecting them with the obvious long ē of gimme!
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Again, slow them down and listen. Notice the hidden assonance – the connection between one of the sounds in the more complex diphthongs:
Gimm ē lay = l e ē nights = n ä ē ghts
There’s one more, which you’ve probably already noticed. Since the vowel sounds in down contain ä (as in papa) plus ū (as in too) and the long i in nights combines ä (as in papa) and long ē (as in me), it’s hard to miss that they both share ä:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
down =d ä ū n nights = n ä ē ghts
Slow them down and listen. Easy to hear now, isn’t it.
Hidden assonance may seem pretty subtle, but it’s no more subtle than the repetition of common tones in complex musical chords, an ordinary feature of musical voice leading. It’s a real thing. Musicians use it all the time. Lyricists can do it too, using the voice leading techniques available in hidden assonance. It adds yet another layer to the sonic fabric of a line. All of it created by vowel connections.
Now, let’s turn our attention to consonant sounds.
Alliteration
Here’s the most common understanding of alliteration:
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Look at the alliteration of the b sound:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
And the l sound:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Pretty neat. Another layer kitted into our sonic fabric.
So is that it? Does that exhaust the layers in Mayer’s line? Nope. Not even close. As we did when we talked about hidden assonance, it’s possible to extend the concept of alliteration, treating it like the musical concept of voice-leading,
…where each musical note transitions to the next in a smooth, harmonious way, moving as few notes as few steps as possible and thus often retaining common tones.
Using this idea, we can talk about repetition of consonant sounds not only at the beginnings of words, but also inside words (medial alliteration) and at the ends of words (terminal alliteration).
First, find the k sounds in:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Yup.
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Now, find the n sounds:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Right:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Knit. Knit. Knit.
We could stop here and convince ourselves that we’ve gotten to the core of the line – that we’ve discovered why it’s so attractive sonically. And we’d be nearly right.
But there’s yet another layer of discovery, based on the work of the legendary literary critic Kenneth Burke from his ground-breaking work in his essay On Musicality in Verse. He calls it concealed alliteration.
Concealed Alliteration
Burke divides consonants into families, governed by where you place your tongue to produce the consonant sound. He recognizes three families: the M family, the N family and the Ng family. Say each one and notice the position of your tongue.
M is formed by closing your lips and flattening your tongue, forcing the air column into your nasal passages, but including your mouth as a resonating chamber.
N is formed by raising the tip of your tongue to your hard palate, again forcing the air column through your nasal passages, but this time including the back portion of your mouth as an attenuated resonating chamber.
Ng (as in “sing”) touches the middle of your tongue to your soft palate (velum), again forcing the air column through your nose, but this time excluding your mouth from acting as a resonating chamber.
Let’s work first with N, where you raise the tip of your tongue to your hard palate. What other consonants use this tongue position? Work your way through the alphabet and find them. I’ll wait.
Interesting, huh? Here is N’s family, listed from closer relatives to more distant cousins.
N
d
t
j
ch
l
Say the word down and notice what your tongue does at the beginning and end. Do you feel your tongue touching your hard palate twice? That’s concealed alliteration, created here by the repetition of the N position in the d and n of down. Pretty cool.
Take your time and find the members of N’s family in our line:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
I found j, t, l, d, and n.
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Say the line a few times, paying attention only to the times your tongue touches your hard palate. You can both hear and feel the connections created by the members of the N family. A pretty tight-knit bunch.
Now look for M’s family. Lips coming together, flat tongue. I’ll wait.
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Yup:
M
b
p
There are a few other distant cousins, but these will do. Now find M’s family, the concealed alliterations, in our line:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
I got:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Of course the b connection was already apparent as simple alliteration, but it’s nice to invite m to the party too. Say the line a few times and pay attention to your lips.
Nice.
Finally, Ng’s family, which touches the middle of your tongue to your soft palate (velum). Again, go through the alphabet and locate those consonants that position you tongue in the Ng position. I’ll be patient.
Yup, g and k.
Now find members of Ng’s family in our line.
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
Say the line a few times, concentration only on where you raise the middle of your tongue to your velum.
Of course you noticed k, which we found in our search for alliteration. But it’s nice to invite g to the party too:
Gimme those jet black kick back lay down nights alone
That pretty much does it. We’ve pretty much seen all the strands in this lovely fabric of sound. It may seem like a long journey just to understand one line, but by now you should have a pretty clear understanding of what makes this line so remarkable. Not only does it say something interesting by creating a complex and attractive metaphor, but it underscores the words by knitting an ingenious fabric of sound, weaving the ideas into a unified whole. Brilliant.
Of course it’s one thing to be able to analyze a line for its sonic fabric, and quite another to create a sonic fabric deliberately and consciously. Whether John Mayer composed this lovely sonic fabric fully aware of the choices he was making, or whether it “just came out that way” makes little difference. It’s still this complex blending of sound and meaning that makes his line work so well. Whether or not he did it on purpose, you can.
Creating a strong sonic fabric takes focus and practice. In my 2nd edition of Songwriting: Essential Guide To Rhyming: A Step-by Step Guide to Better Rhyming for Songwriters and Poets, you’ll find plenty of exercises to improve your knitting skills. Exercises not only for rhyme and rhyme types, but also exercises to help you create the more remote elements of your sonic fabric, including hidden assonance, concealed alliteration and even a new concept, family assonance.
In the meantime, listen carefully, have fun, and most of all, write fearlessly.
Pat Pattison
Also, watch this YouTube video about Pat Pattison's book:
Pat Pattison is a professor at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches lyric writing and poetry. In addition to his four books, Songwriting Without Boundaries (Penguin, Random House), Writing Better Lyrics (Penguin, Random House), The Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure (Berklee Press), and The Essential Guide to Rhyming (Berklee Press), Pat has developed five online courses for Berklee Online: three on lyric writing, one on poetry, and one on creative writing, all available through online.berklee.edu. His filmed series of lectures for Coursera.org has over 1,600,000 students enrolled to date. Pat has written over fifty articles for various magazines and blogs and has chapters in both The Poetics of American Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi) and the Handbook on Creative Writing (Edinburgh University Press). He
continues to present songwriting clinics across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Pat’s students include multiple Grammy-winner Gillian Welch, John Mayer, Tom Hambridge, and Joelle James; Artists Karmin, American Authors, Liz Longley, and Charlie Worsham; Hit writers Amy Allen, Justin Tranter, Greg Becker and many, many more.
For information on the 25th Annual USA Songwriting Competition, go to: https://www.songwriting.net
