"Lovely Rita"

Backdated, archival post

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I recently listened to the Tremeloes' cover of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue," and for some reason, I then got thinking about "Lovely Rita."  I'm not sure if it's an indication of Holly's influence on the Beatles or just common poetic devices, but there seems to be a resemblance between "Pretty Peggy Sue" (a line from two of the verses in Holly's song) and "Rita, meter maid."  The syllable count for each phrase - even the division among the words - is the same (two syllables, two syllables, one syllable), and there's alliteration between two consecutive words ("Pretty Peggy" and "meter maid").

Regardless of that possible influence, I found a few other interesting things in the lyrics of "Lovely Rita."

The final line in the third verse exhibits two strains of alliteration:

In a cap, she looked much old
And the bag across her shoulder
Made her look a little like a milit'ry man

There are a lot of words that begin with M or L, so the collection of words appears (and - more importantly - sounds) uniform, like Rita's appearance.

There’s also assonance in the last line of the second verse:

Standing by a parking meter
When I caught a glimpse of Rita
Filling in the ticket in a little white book

Again, there's a sort of uniformity, but - if I have my phonetics correct - the I in white isn't the same as the other Is.  It's a long vowel where the others are short.  So the vowels sounds in that line provide a sort of audible representation of Rita's filling in the book.  The previous Is go with each other, but she hasn't gotten to that last one yet.  It's as if it has yet to be filled in.