Importance of Words to Music, a lyrical and melodic inquiry! Options

[trunks_girl26]

I resisted the urge to put this in Issues, even though it tends to be rather culturally relevant. Mods feel free to move this if they would like.

I just finished having a rather intense discussion with another forumite *cough*pwm*cough* which started as one about the limitations (or lack thereof) a choir has with music, as opposed to an orchestra and branched into one concerning the importance of words to music in general.

He tends to be of the opinion that words aren't as important as melody, while I feel that words can be as powerful, if not more, than the melody.

So, I put it to you, good Matazonians:

How important are words to music?
If words have no importance, would it be possible to take the same melody, put it to radically different phrases, and not not drastically change its meaning?
Does culture play a part in how important words are to music, if so how?

[pgrmdave]

That seems to me like you're using important in a different manner than I was. To the definition, yes - the music is needed otherwise it isn't a song. However, that's like saying that the most important part of a question is a question mark, because otherwise it isn't a question. While that is true, it's s slight difference from what people typically think of as important. I've been looking at it more as "What gets the message across better, and in a more artistic manner?". Taken that way, it does become much more difficult to say, especially given songs that tell distinct stories (Alice's Restaurant) or have very specific meanings (Let's Impeach the President). While it is clear that lyrics don't matter to most music (because most music doesn't have lyrics), that doesn't mean that every song has music more important than the lyrics, nor does it diminish the value of lyrics.