Template:Toto analysis

An unhappy collision of contrary rhythms

So let’s get on to that. Here we cite Adam Bradley’s The Poetry of Pop, a wonderfully patient examination of modern doggerel, to validate our own count: the line scans with an already outrageous fourteen syllables — iambic pentameter it is not — but Paich then jams twenty-one syllables into that space. Bradley drily observes:

“the rhythmic and melodic structure of the line forces the lead singer, Joseph Williams, into circumlocutions of stress that end up mangling the final word of that longest line; instead of “Serengeti”, the rhythm and melody of the song force him to pronounce it as “Serengeti”... I understand this moment now as an unhappy, though fleeting, collision of contrary rhythms. The song still moves me, however, all the more now for this small window into the world of its rhythm.”

Mr. Bradley is clearly a glass-half-full sort of chap.