The words “heart” and “apart” are often used as rhymes, in song lyrics and in poetry. Shakespeare used this rhyme. So have Bob Dylan, Hal David and Dorothy Fields, so there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s got form, you know. But, as I have noted previously, in this Menu Item, and in this piece from 2018, “I’m always grateful when a lyricist avoids it and surprised when someone who has avoided it previously decides to use it”.

That Menu Item is still called ‘57 songs that rhyme “heart” with “part” or “apart”’. That’s how many I had noted down when the page was created. It now lists 147 different songs. You get the idea.

I have wondered for a long time if there are any lyricists who have never used the rhyme. Successful lyricists, with a decent body of work behind them. I thought that I had found one: Bernie Taupin, who wrote the words to most of Elton John’s repertoire.

Think of all the major hits from the 70s and 80s. You will not find any that rhyme “heart” and “apart”. Go through the albums too. There’s nothing, nothing that I can find at least. I was getting ready to announce Bernie Taupin as the only major lyricist who has avoided this regularly-used rhyme. And then I checked the updated lyrics to “Candle in the Wind”. The 1973 version, about Marilyn Monroe, did not use the rhyme. But “Candle in the Wind (1997)”, written shortly after the death of Princess Diana on 31 August that year, does so:

Goodbye England’s rose;
may you ever grow in our hearts.
You were the grace that placed itself
where lives were torn apart.

These words were written without much time to spare, ready for the funeral on 6 September 1997. Without them, Bernie Taupin would be the only major lyricist I know of who has avoided rhyming “Heart” and “Apart”.