Originally Posted by Joice Marie
Lyrics -- are sonically melodic


I agree with this, and even in mundane speech is music inherent. In many ways we are musical beings, as we couldn't make ourselves understood without the rhythm and tonality in our speech and languages. Even our physical prescence is musical, the way we walk, gesture ect. So this makes perfect sense.

Most songwriters work from a head melody, rhythm, or the latent musicality of the way words are written in form, whatever form, poetry, lyricism ect.

It's a good way to understand why lyrics are important in a song, when lyrics are there, as certain lyrics invites certain melodic or rhytmical phrasing. If that invitation is not recieved well, there won't be much prosody, or marriage between the two language forms, music and words. I think this is simply because they follow the same rules.

At heart, music is no different than words in terms of musicality, and thats why prosody can exist in the first place. Prosody is more a synchonicity between music and words, than a "fit" between to seperate entities. It's like dancing, two partners has both to be great, and even if one can take the lead and make it work, if the balance is too much in favour of one, the dance will look avkward and less aestaetic..