Sometimes, lyrics can have an adverse effect on the melody line of songs. Lyrics can also, include syllables such as ‘thandhanaane..naane”,’lalala…” and so on.

If you think about it, there are thousands of examples out there that we have grown up listening to. What I would be interested to know is the reasoning behind choosing certain phrases/syllables as a part of song lyrics.

Even though the choice of phrases depends largely on the context and the theme conveyed, here’s an example to illustrate my point - “Thangai" would be a better word than “Thangachi” and “Mayakkam" would be a better word than “Urakkam”. And here’s why I feel so - it just ‘sounds’ right. This is somewhat similar to the logic behind idioms in English grammar. I’m not sure if these are good examples, but, you get the idea, right?

On a related note, WikiHow has already described a set of steps to write song lyrics. Here are a few other sources that does the same.

So, the question here is how do one decide the right syllables/phrases to effectively express a song, especially in Indian music sub-genres. Do you have any examples to share?

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