so i know we can't really take a real poll here, but i'm curious to know how many people will respond to this question of mine....  I'm just curious, mainly, because it seems like a lot of people fit into response #2 (read further).

I'l give you a little dinky scale or something if you don't wanna give a black-or-white answer...

Of you song-writers out there (or lyric-writers, as you certainly are included, even if you don't write music), how many of you would feel uncomfortable writing lyrics to your song that didn't rhyme?

[0 through 8]

0...  i rap.  anything goes, even if i must intentionally mispronounce the english language to force that rhyme out there.  's wut it 'sall about, b*tch
1...  do or die.  if i can't make my lyrics rhyme, then I QUIT!!
2....  yeah, i'm a bandwagonist.  i do it because it's musically acceptable, and i may as well, since that's just how everybody does it
3...  i prefer half and half... i don't really worry about it though, it just comes out naturally
4...  rhyming?? it's too cliché for me to want to get too involved with it. one or two lines wouldn't hurt though.
5...  i fight the system.
6...  (kings) None of the above
7...  (kings) Every waking hour of my life I think and feel, when in a moment I can sum up / express some of what I think and feel in 4 lines that rhyme or 50 lines that rhyme, I have then accomplished something.
8...  [other] (please explain)

       listed 8's:
   --(toastedgoat) every song lyrically for me is different. I approach each song on it's own and at times I will try to make em rhyme (cause I like the effect) and at times I could care less about rhyming.
   --(BackwardsHat) It depends on the song, genre, what I want to do, and if I'm lazy that day.

so...?  whaddya say?

well, 5

though I may occasionally rhyme, I will twist phrases around and seek grammatical bypasses and/or synonyms to avoid it. it helps to not be natively english speaking, which is also the cause of me being incapable to give the proper name to the type of rhyming I do intentionally apply... but especially end-rhyme is bogus and fake. I seek to keep it clean and real....

6.....None of the above
And
7.....Every waking hour of my life I think and feel, when in a moment I can sum up / express some of what I think and feel in 4 lines that rhyme or 50 lines that rhyme, I have then accomplished something.
To express them any other way would be a book or a blog, the very fact that they do rhyme make it the 'song'.

She's a rich bitch
Lives in a glitch

Says it all
I wrote about 7 A4s to a Lawyer about the same person, that didn't say anything!

haha, fair enough.  though, i don't intend to imply that rhyming is of the devil, or that it should be shuned, but rather... there's no rule about song writing at all.  It's like hair color; it doesn't ultimately influence anything--it's just a trait of the person.  Similarly, rhyming or not rhyming (or something in between ) is a completely different variable altogether, apart from it's definition as a 'song'.  a person may prefer one 'color' or another just as easily as such a person might prefer one style or another.

To say that one likes rap, another likes country, another who doesn't rhyme at all, and still another who likes techno (having no words at all, mind you.. thus, no rhyming, yet no NOT rhyming)... to say that one person's tastes don't qualify as a liking to 'songs' because his/her taste diverges from a traditional style (i choose the word traditional on purpose here, since rhyming has been the tradition since forever, practically) is to say that music has become more ridged, and this partiuclar rhyming front has just now become completely definable, totally and explicitly, leaving no more room for pioneering within the subject!  We can't say that music is limited to rhyming, i dare say.

So, in this light, i beg to differ from your opinion, kings, that anything outside of rhyming would be a book or a blog, therefore excluding it from what ought to be the definition of a 'song'.  I find that I communicate much much much better if I'm not required to rhyme.  I hesitate to say that I'd have done any better writing out 7 pages to a lawyer about a single person, but surely I would do better with it if I had to creative license NOT to rhyme all the way through it

me?  I'd say I'm a 4 on that scale i put down, but i wouldn't tell anybody to their face that their rhyming is cliché; it's an inward reflection for me.  I prefer not to feel like I must rhyme, but that's just my style.

don't get me wrong though-- I find that there's a certain beauty to well-thought rhymes, but most people aren't able to capture this beauty right off the bat, and they may never do it because we aren't taught that the rhymes must be beautiful, only that they ought to exist.  consequently, we get tons of people trying to "find their groove" in the music writing scene, and they (IMO) are going about it the wrong way, since a "good" rhyme to them is a rhyme that only comes once in a while, and that the listening multitudes need to suffer through 6.8 billion other "not so good" rhymes (ones that only exist to satisfy a criteria that doesn't actually exist) in order to get there.

D'après moi, I'd say that cliché is cliché because clichés are true.  make sense?  why would rhyming have stuck around for so so so long if it was a flop of an effort to invoke the human emotions?  in that respect, rhyming will always be around, becuase it appeals to a certain kind of crowd.  But I speak on behalf of the rest of the crowd!  Perhaps I represent a noisy minority, but I intend to make my case well known!

that's all for me.  perhaps i'll expound a little more a little later.. i'm tired.

TLS

(ps, kings.. i added your 6 and 7 to the lead post)

I would say it all depends on what your doing... If your trying to break the mold and do new and inventive style then yeah making rhyming important is not the point.  On the other hand imho if your doing a more radio mainstream type of music then you might want to put some importance to rhyming.. Although rhythm is very important too,  not just the rhyming.

For me I like trying to rhyme if I can .  if I can't make the rhyme work, then screw it, the content (meaning) of the verse becomes  more important than the rhyme at that point. 
so I am probably one of the numbers up above just not sure which one.

EDIT#0 It would be #8 .. every song lyrically for me is different. I approach each song on it's own and at times I will try to make em rhyme (cause I like the effect) and at times I could care less about rhyming.  it probably would never be a 1 cause I'm not a rapper  I'm more of a hip hop clippety clop type of guy. baaaa baaa hahah ha

EDIT #1oops my bad  I after looking closer I see #'s 0,and1 would not work for me.

6.... becuase i dont write lyrics myself.

but if i could then....
 well, im in two minds about it. 

One mind is saying that writing lyrics that rhyme is an indication to the song writers skill (cos you've got to have some intuition, be quick thinking as well as a  good knowledge of the language).  Rhyming songs are also friendly to the ear.

The other mind says... well, you said it yourself; a rhyme that sounds good is "well thought". There are some songwriters that rhyme really simple words ( you know what i mean) that can sound predictable and Boring.
  imo, Writing songs that are good without rhymes can sometimes be cleverer ( or seem cleverer ). Depends on the style of the song and what ur trying to achieve with it though.

Ian

haha, thanks for your insight, toastedgoat   i like that clarification, because there certainly is a difference between the rapper that i put as #0, and a hip hop clippety clop type of guy 

I do write , and I'll be honest in saying that Inspiration plays a key role, if I don't 'need' to say it then why should I force it ?? And if it wants to come out, it will, properly ! (I love the system !! LOL)
Ok 'experimental stuff' aside, lets say you just want to write a song/lyrics, and so I presume you have something you want to say and you want others to hear it too, If you decide to not rhyme that's a different matter, but otherwise you sit down and start to write. I'm sure at some point you'll want to rhyme or at least find a rhythm and a melody to the words you write because that is the very nature of what you are doing, crafting words, not only for your self but also for another, (to be understood).
So what I'm trying to say is that I believe that if you write a song or a poem you will always make it 'rhyme', 'rhythmic', 'melodic' or 'flowing' (unless you consciously don't!!), in that it doesn't have to rhyme but it will always rhyme of a kind !

As for a good or bad rhyme whether predictable or just a cringe, I've noticed recently how 'rappers' on the popular radio stations are all rapping about love and deep emotions, which result in the crappiest raps! They should stick to rapping about who they are and what they will do to you down a dark ally, at least they can express these things credibly!
Bono has the most amazing rhymes he's a master at weaving words.
   
Though actual rhyming is simply fun I still maintain that "The Song" it's rhymes and it's meter are a way of remembering, an education even. And have always been. From Nursery Rhymes to your 12X tables, from chanting monks to 80,000 singing along to Queen, they are all very special states of being with incredible lessons to be learnt from if understood.

btw, Cool thread TLS ! 

I fit in to #1. I get mad alot about lyrics sounding cheesy. lol!

For me, I'd say 8. It depends on the song, genre, what I want to do, and if I'm lazy that day. I typically try to rhyme almost habitually, I guess it's because that's what I hear.
0 drives me crazy at times, sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's Dido and Aeneas...
From Dido and Aeneas:
"...The greatest blessing Fate can give
Our Carthage to secure and Troy revive...
...A tale so strong and full of woe
Might melt the rocks as well as you...
...With drooping wings you Cupids come,
To scatter roses on her tomb..."
I think they do that to purposely throw us off when reading it...

I've been focussing on writing lyrics more lately, I used stress out over rhyming, then I realized you don't have to...Poetry doesn't always rhyme, just uses words, using things like metaphors, imagery, etc.

And then sometimes I'm 1...like this time:
"...the continuation of our lyrical proclamations
of stylistic annunciations and new compilations
and cooperations without limitations
Without fake imitations of these flowing creations"
...yeah, sometimes that...I blame facebook freestyles for that one...

I have a friend who is definately a 5. He often recites the poem from somewhere that goes:
"Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
This line doesn't rhyme.
Neither did this one."

In my opinion, it's harder to write lyrics that don't rhyme at all (well, it's not just harder to write something that doesn't rhyme, but in my opinion hard to write something that doesn't rhyme to a specific song). But I just write however I want to, whether it's rhyme or not.

#1.  It was an easy choice for me: when I write lyrics, I start with a line in my head, repeat it until a suitable following line follows.  So on and so forth.  For every line that doesn't rhyme, I am building a rhyme pattern (ABAB, AABB, ABCA etc.).  Basically, it's how I think when I write lyrics.

As for how important it is...well, standard poetry differs greatly from lyrics in that in free-form poetry, the rhythm is given as a guideline, and it's up to the reader to maintain it.  In lyrics, you are in a constrained rhythm, and the lack of rhyme sounds silly sometimes.  Plus, catchy rhyme is clever.  Observe:

Tu m'adore,
mais je m'en fiche.
Parce que tu es bete,
et je suis riche.

Literally: you love me, but I don't care because you are ugly and I am rich.  The rhyme of "fiche" and "riche" is a very typical line, but it draws attention to the substantial weight of the lines.

I should emphasize that rhyme, at least lyrically, is audible rhyme.  "Fiche" and "riche" above were a perfect rhyming pair, but that isn't the only way to rhyme.  The words "sure" and "gold" don't rhyme unless you're singing, "There's a lady who's sure/all that glitters is gold".  In my opinion, the best lyrics are the ones that rhyme audibly, but stand as free-form poetry by themselves.