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Unread 02-17-2018, 01:06 PM
Max Goodman Max Goodman is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
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I may have found an example of intentionally misplaced stress adding something to a song. "The Sounds of Silence" by Paul Simon was one of the first pop songs I ever heard, and it struck young me as immeasurably strange and otherworldly. It's hard to revive that impression, because the song's familiarity makes it feel unstrange and also because my familiarity with a wider variety of other melodies makes what this one does feel less unusual. But I wonder whether that initial strangeness might be intended, and whether it is enhanced by Simon's misplacing stresses. For example:

because a vision soft-LY creep-ING
left its seeds while i WAS sleep-ING

The misplaced stresses are frequent but not consistent, and I have no idea whether others experience the otherworldliness that I did when I first heard the song.
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