The Hardest Part of Writing Lyrics Is Deciding What to Leave Out

2026-09-22

A mehendi song went from twelve crowded lines to four about a grandmother's hands—and got better. Here's how cutting detail works in lyric writing.

Most people think writing lyrics means adding. More lines, more names, more details, more feelings. But the real work happens the other way. The hardest part of writing a lyric is deciding what to leave out. A song gets stronger when you cut the extra details and let one clear image carry the whole thing.

The mehendi song that started with twelve lines

A friend was writing a song for her cousin's mehendi. She sent me the first draft. Twelve lines. In those twelve lines she mentioned the cousin's name, the mother, the father, two chachis, a brother in Bengaluru who couldn't fly down, the food, the colour of the lehenga, and a joke about the pandit arriving late.

Every line was true. Every line was about someone she loved. And the whole thing felt like a WhatsApp group, not a song.

We sat with it. She kept asking, "But if I remove the brother, won't it hurt him?" That's the trap. You think leaving something out means you don't care about it. It doesn't. It means you trust the one thing you kept to speak for everything else.

We cut it down. Twelve lines became four. The four lines were only about one thing: her grandmother's hands during the mehendi. The grandmother is old now, and her hands shake a little. She can't sing anymore, but she sat there while the mehendi was being applied to the cousin, and she kept touching the cousin's palm, checking the design, the way she used to do it for the mother thirty years ago.

That's the song. Four lines. No names except in the last line. No chachis. No brother. No pandit. When my friend sang it at the mehendi, the grandmother cried. So did the brother, who was watching on a video call from Bengaluru. He didn't feel left out. He felt that the song was about his family, even though his name wasn't in it.

Here's the repeatable part. If you want to try this with your own lyric, do this:

• Write the version where you include everything. Names, places, inside jokes. Get it all out. This is not wasted work. It's how you find the one thing that matters.
• Read it out loud. Every time you have to explain a detail to someone who wasn't there, that detail is costing you the listener.
• Find the one image that holds the whole feeling. In this case, it was the grandmother's hands on the cousin's palm.
• Cut everything that isn't that image, or directly serving it. Keep one name at most. Keep one place at most.
• Read it again. If it feels too short, that's usually a good sign. Short feels scary to the writer and complete to the listener.

Why cutting makes the song land harder

When you leave things out, the listener puts themselves in. If you name two chachis, I picture your chachis. If you don't name anyone, I picture mine. The song stops being about your family and starts being about family.

There's also rhythm. Extra detail clogs a line. Four lines about one grandmother's hands have room to breathe. Twelve lines about everyone have to rush to fit, and rushing is the opposite of what a mehendi song should do.

And there's the thing nobody says out loud: a listener can only hold one idea at a time. Give them one, they remember it. Give them seven, they remember none.

You don't have to be a lyricist to do this

You might be writing a farewell song for a colleague at the office, or something for a friend who's moving to another city. You'll be tempted to include the inside jokes, the project names, the manager, the cafeteria. Don't. Pick the one image. The empty chair. The mug nobody's washed yet. The last auto ride together. That's the song.

If you want to hear how this sounds when it's done, try jhoom.baby. You type one idea and it gives you back a finished song with lyrics and music in a few minutes, ready to play, share and download. You can also listen to "Invisible String" and "Invisible String of Love" to hear how a single thread of an idea can carry a whole song. And for something in Hindi, "अर्जुन के पाँच मिनट" is a good place to start.

The first draft is where you put everything in. The final version is where you take almost all of it out. That's not losing the story. That's finding it.