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I read it through - I wound up putting the stresses in different places to make it fit. The double beats still sound awkward to me - the original is sung very lyrically and smoothly, the MIDI is too bouncy and Tin-Pan-Alley sounding (I know, MIDI has certain limitations), especially with the double beats.

Well, the MIDI was a pretty quick effort to try to whip up something from scratch that would sound decent. It sounds a lot better than last night's MIDI except I need to do something about ths second line of each verse and the chorus.

BTW, I wrote the lyrics originally based on a slightly-faulty memory of the song, and derived the music from that. There are melodic differences among the verses. Some I may change, some I'll leave as is. Original is public domain, so I claim artistic license.

There's always a work-around to get back to the primary beat - e.g. "But NOW the PLANS of three EVil MEN/Are RUSHing her TOWards her DOOM"? "No pictures, no music, no pets, no love" "She will not give up the ghost"

I like your first line. Mind if I use it?

The "No pictures" line is a spot where I misremembered how the original went, but I like the way my melody fits the words there. Your suggested line doesn't fit the original tune unless you shift a syllable somewhere; it comes out "no picTURES, no MUsic, no PETS, no LOVE". But I really like my line there.

Although "She will not give up the ghost" certainly works lyrically, I think the point of "she reFUSes" is critical to the meaning of the text.

"They're not trying to starve her because she's dying" HAS to be reworked - it's the buildup to the climax of the verse, and it has a whole extra foot in it, plus an inadvertent internal rhyme.

It works with the "No pictures" music I mis-transcribed/created. No extra feet ("trying" is one syllable). Although the word stress on "dyING" is not standard pronunciation for the word, I think it's reasonably effective there because it emphasises that she's not "in the process" of dying.

I'm being very, very picky and technical here, I know -- but if this weren't a good song with the potential of being a GREAT song, it wouldn't be worth picking over. (I wouldn't use blind here either, even though Arlo Guthrie did . . . "it was a typical case of American Blind Justice" . . . he was trying to be funny.)

Any ideas for a good adjective for Judge Greer? Blind really is the OBVIOUS one, but there's gotta be something else that would work too.

BTW, I'll be trying to generate some BMPs of sheet music (sorry I can't do PDF) soon; that may make it easier to judge how stuff fits musically.