Some people like to analyze lyrics a lot, while for others the lyrics are there just to fill the space. I usually listen to them pretty closely, given the song is in a language I know well. Sometimes not, mostly depends on the artist. One example for me is Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’m not trying to say their lyrics aren’t good, but what makes their music work for me is the groove and I just naturally don’t pay much attention to the words.

Usually when the music is fantastic – especially a live performance – it just fills my mind and I don’t have a clue what the songs are about if I don’t know them. One such example was seeing the Finnish band Emma Salokoski Ensemble two weeks ago. Other times the best live experiences are cool sing-a-longs, when you and the people around you know the words well.

A beautiful thing about lyrics is how they can mean completely different things to different people. Sure, there usually is a consensus of what a song is about, but people do have different contexts for the same lyrics in their lives. I don’t think that’s misinterpreting the lyrics, just making them work for you.

To give an example of a song where lyrics play an important role would be just about any topical song – still people can listen to them without a clue about the words. One such is Bob Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. It’s a highly emotional song from the ’60s, telling a story of a young and wealthy white man killing a black woman and getting away with only a six-month sentence. The Wikipedia page has the whole story about the factual events, LyricWiki has the lyrics.

A song like that could easily be just boring and repetitive, but the story the song tells along with many similar sounding words make that repetitiveness work for the song. It’s not that an instrumental version of the song wouldn’t work, it could very well, because the lyrics have given the melody a meaning.