I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree when it comes to songs being music or not.

Interesting analysis. Now, when you listened to songs in other languages you interpret the lyrics as music, so it would be like hearing one additional instrument.

Also, the experience of music listening can change how we see songs with lyrics: analytic people that focus on the rational part of music may be more aware of the lyrics than people that focus more on how it makes them feel (and not necessarily listening to the lyrics but the overall mood it transmits).

Plus, when we listen to music intently vs background music, our music experience changes. When we don’t pay attention to the music we are less likely to get fed up with it, and sad music (with lyrics included) is rated as more positive than when we listen to music intently.

So having lyrics in a song doesn’t mean it’s not music and our listening experience (how we process music and the factor surrounding the listening experience) plays a big role in this.

Saying that songs and music are completely separate phenomena seems too big of a statement. But I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Thanks for the input ;)