Two cliches make us laugh, but a hundred cliches move us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.
Umberto Eco
The singer who died last year was one of America's great songwriters. His many fans marveled each time they heard his lyrics, so clever, so beautiful, so funny. Yet as original as Prine's songs are, they often include cliches. He had a way of making tired cliches seem creative, as if we had never heard them before.
In Sam Stone we hear "monkey on his back" and "little pitchers have big ears." In Daddy's Little Pumpkin he says he will "rattle somebody's cage." In Summers End, one of his last songs, he shows that two cliches do make us laugh: "That ol' Easter egg ain't got a leg to stand on/Well I can see that you can't win for trying."
Perhaps Prine's cleverest use of a cliche comes in Spanish Pipedream: "For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve."
Then there It's a Big Old Goofy World in which he strings together more than a dozen familiar cliches, crafting something truly original out of them. Here we find "work like a dog," "bump on a log," "quiet as a mouse," "big as a house," "eats like a horse," "smokes like a chimney" and so on. There they all are in one delightful song, celebrating a reunion.
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