Wednesday, November 1, 2023

"99 Pounds"

A number of years ago, I noticed that the phrase "powder and paint" in the line "There's a little devil livin' under all that powder and paint" in "99 Pounds" alliterates and that this feature helps portray that artifice.  A couple weeks ago, I realized that there's more to it than that:  the words "little devil livin'" also exhibit assonance (the short i) and consonance (the repeated l).  In the same way that these rhetorical features make the line sound good although it's describing a "devil," the girl in the song looks nice when she's adorned in her makeup, but really, "she's a heartbreaker."