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?

[Oni Usagi]

To me the meaning of the words is usually less important than melody of a song. I usually don't notice the meaning of the lyrics of songs until I've listened to them quite a bit. Even if I know the lyrics to sing along I don't necessarily notice what they mean. However the voice can be a very important part of the melody, even more so than the instrumental part. I have the instrumental and original version of several foreign songs, to which I don't know the meaning of the lyrics. In most cases the instrumental versions seem empty, this may just be because I heard the vocal version first, but I suspect it has to do with whether or not the song was written with the intention of having lyrics.

There are also songs in which the lyrics are more important to the song for their meaning. To me this primarily includes songs with comedic lyrics. The song Kill a Kitten has a melody that I kinda like, but I probably wouldn't listen to it if it had "normal" lyrics. On the other hand I find the lyrics of quite a few Billy Talent songs enjoyable but would probably still listen to the songs if they had different lyrics because I like the music.

Basically, I agree that one is not necessarily more important than the other all the time.