Ubiquitous to nearly every genre and style of vocal music worldwide, non-lexical vocables (hereafter NLVs) deserve more scholarly attention. Focusing on the phonetic aspect of NLVs, I define an NLV as a meaningful, identifiable utterance that is not recognized as a word in the intended context. Building on existing studies in world music (Frisbie 1980 and Chambers 1980), concert music (Morrison 2021), and recently pop (Malawey 2020 and Wallmark 2022), I present a tentative typology of NLVs to theorize their attributes, sources and manifestations. I argue that NLVs' most important attribute is their versatility, which originates from their amplitude, malleability, and democracy. I conclude with three vignettes (Robert Zollitsch and Gong Linna's Tǎntè, Azis' Sen Trope and Kazhi Chestno, and Hoàng Thùy Linh's See Tihn) that illustrate how artists take advantage of NLV's versatility in musically and linguistically unique ways to enhance their expression of emotions, identities, and cultures.