Rock and roll rhetoric: Life In The Fast Lane
There were lines on the mirror,
Lines on her face
She pretended not to notice,
She was caught up in the race.
That first couplet works so well because it takes a mental double-take to realise that the first set of lines are on and not in the mirror. And then we remember that:
They knew all the right people,
They took all the right pills
They threw outrageous parties,
They paid heavenly bills.
The lines / lines line is another example of syllepsis; the use of a word in two incongruous ways. It can have a striking effect, making the listener pause and replay to fully process the meaning. In the wrong hands, however, as Mark Forsyth observes in his excellent Elements of Eloquence, it can sound a bit over-clever.
Other successful, rock and roll examples include:
- “Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice” – Hotel California, (Felder, Henley, Frey), Eagles again. Here, the syllepsis is on the verb “on”.
- “You were pumping iron while I was pumping irony” – Heaven Knows (Johnstone, Barratt), Robert Plant. Plant’s a great songwriter, but this isn’t one of his.
- “She blew my nose and then she blew my mind” – Honky Tonk Women, (Jagger, Richards), The Rolling Stones
Back to the Eagles. Here’s the reunited line-up …
From the Eagles’ 1976 album Hotel California.
