Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words. Example:
In cliches: sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen, bigger and better, jump for joy....
While alliteration is the recurrence of single letter-sounds, there is another kind of recurrence which is the echo or repetition of a word or phrase. This is found in many kinds of poetry, from nonsense rhymes to ballads. The repeated words or syllables add an extra beat and accentuate the rhythm.
For the literary minded among us, here's a prime example from my English lit days. I actually wrote a ten page paper analyzing this - and got an A+, so it's dear to my heart, LOL:
Pied Beauty
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted & pieced -- fold, fallow, & plough;
And all trades, their gear & tackle & trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
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Considerably less noticeable is Gord's "
Pickin' up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream" opening from Carefree Highway. Or all the Ws in "What can you do, you’ll never win,
Where will you go, when night closes in?
Where will it lead, will it ever it end,
Where will it stop?" from Clouds of Loneliness. It pops up again in High and Dry: "Her sails billow like bubbles..." Or the Ts in "What a tale my thoughts could tell" from IYCRMM. Or "From the bar room to the bedpost" from Long Way Back Home. Etc., etc. etc. Not as florid as Hopkins and Gord uses alliteration less than internal rhyme and rhythm, the songwriter's basic tools.
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