Music or Lyrics?

Would you listen to a song because the lyrics seem wonderful to you even if the music is boring? And what about the opposite? Do you enjoy some songs that have uninteresting, sometimes even nonsensical lyrics? Do great lyrics compel you to like the music? Does great music compel you to take the lyrics seriously? Can you separate the music from the lyrics?

Take, for example, "Come Together" by the Beatles and more specifically by John Lennon. If you know the song, you know the lyrics are not exactly "We Shall Overcome." But, man, what a great song.

Then there are plenty of songs with interesting lyrics that really don't move me because the music is . . . eh.

Here's Lennon himself from the the Playboy Interviews with John and Yoko (conducted by Urban school father David Sheff) on his own lyrics:

Sheff: With these early love songs, were they about your girlfriends, your love life?

Lennon: They were basically made up. . . . Yeah, we were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, a la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought to them than that -- to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant.

As for "Come Together," Lennon calls the lyrics "gobbledygook." But about the music he says, "It was a funky record. . . . It's funky, it's bluesy, and I'm singing pretty well. I like the sound of the record. You can dance to it!"