Music and Lyrics

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I showed my NT friend a song and she complained that the recording was bad and she couldn't hear the lyrics. So I was wondering, does anyone else not hear lyrics, but rather just noise? I always just hear a voice. Just a sound. I never hear words in a song, just the song itself, if that makes any sense. Maybe it's because I'm more of a visual learner or something... But everyone tends to know all the lyrics to a song, but I have to look them up if I want to know them at all. Anyone know what I mean?

I like to sing along to songs without knowing the lyrics. It's more fun to sing along with the sounds completely by ear than to see the lyrics and sing along. Seeing the lyrics takes a lot from the fun of singing.

Have you had your hearing checked?
I am partially deaf and there are certain notes I don't hear.
This can make many singers blur into the background
(Jimi Hendrix for one although I can hear Serj Tankian's lyrics from System of a Down easily )

I'm not very good with picking up the lyrics either. I hear other people singing part of a well-known song and then that's where I usually pick up the lyrics.

This is a bit off-topic but I've also noticed NTs are good with memorizing the singers of songs. Like last night a song came on the telly what I heard millions of times but couldn't tell you who sings it, and my aunt said, ''ohh, that's [name of singer]'', and then my mum said, ''yeah, he also sang [name of another song of his]''. I hear this a lot with many people, making me feel very dim on memorizing who sings what. I can only memorize a few singers and a few songs they sing.

Depends on the song and how I feel. With a good song, when I'm paying attention, I'll catch all the lyrics. But most of the time it's just in one ear and out the other, similar to how it is when I talk to people.

I tend to listen to japanese music (where I don't understand anything) so that might be related.

I know the music and lyrics in most of the older songs, as well as the name of the song and the band that sings it. For newer songs, however, I don't really know the lyrics to most of them and I don't really pay attention to them half the time, either.

I've always had great difficulty hearing lyrics in music, regardless of how clearly they're sang. I can hear the sound of a voice singing, as it's just another instrument in the song, but I can't separate the lyrics/singing from the rest of the music and process it into words. I can try really hard to focus on what the lyrics are, but then I can't hear the music.

This is one of the reasons I don't even listen to music with lyrics. Not only that, but music with no lyrics I can make my own meaning and feelings to the song, instead of it being about what ever a person is singing about. The very little music I do listen to that has lyrics, it's usually female vocals, I can't hear what they're saying but I love the sound of the voice.

I always blame English being my second language for my not being able to pick up the lyrics. I'm surprised that there are people here on WP that have the same problem, assuming that those posters are native English speakers.

Nope, can not relate to that at all. Maybe it's because i'm more of an auditory kind of person. I always hear the lyrics. For me, this is just the essence of music. Even when it's in a language i don't fully understand. I just hear the lyrics two or three times, and i can sing a long. Love to do that by the way

i always hear the singing, but i also dont conciously hear the actual words. for me, the lyrics are just another instrument

Nothing to do with NT vs Aspie.

Some individuals are more into music than others, and some genres of music are easier to decifer lyrically than others. Depends on the individual, and upon what kind of music the individual is into.

Hard rock and metal are generally very hard to decifer lyric-wise.

Take the seventies metal classic "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple.

What is the song about?

Well...there is 'smoke on the water' , and then there is "fire in the sky"...and thats about all i - or anyone-even a dedicated metal head- could tell you-even after hearing the song for years on the radio.


But if you listen to "In a Metal Mood"- a concept album done in the nineties by Pat Boone you can decifer more. THAT Pat Boone- the pop crooner of the Fifties. On that album he does metal classics in an old fashioned pop-jazz-crooner style including "Smoke on the Water". They all hilarious when you first hear them done that way. On a second hearing they are actually kinda cool as well. But I digress.

When you hear Pat Boone sing it a Sinatra/crooner style with clear diction (and a different music background) you can clearly hear each word.

Turns out the "Smoke on the Water" is an epic true story about the band waiting to go on stage at a rock festival in Geneva Switzerland. While the Rolling Stones were on stage some incompentent roadie plugged something in the wrong way and started a huge fire, and...smoke blew across the lake, and fire went into the sky. Who knew?

I never really pay attention to the lyrics in songs because I'm always distracted by the instrumentation. Since I was a kid I've always liked songs for the overall sound and mood they create rather than connecting to the lyrics and feeling the intended emotion of the song through the meaning of the lyrics.

To me I can see the correlation between not hearing the lyrics in music and AS. People with AS experience emotion in the more raw form without the verbal thinking behind it so it makes it more likely for them to connect to the music through the sound rather than the lyrics. Also the fact that lyrics often have abstract metaphors and similies which can be really confusing to understand, and it often tells the story of someone so you have to be able to understand the emotion that such a person would be feeling and relate it to a time when you've felt that emotion. It is a lot easier to connect to a song with the minor (sad) or major (happy) key and be excited though drum beats or feel nostalgic through long phrases, rather than having to analyse and interpret lyrics in a song.

I also find that if I make myself pay attention to the lyrics then my brain gets taken over by trying to understand what the lyrics mean then I don't hear the music and enjoy it as my brain is too occupied.

I tend to pay very close attention to lyrics. While I still have problems with it, they helped me learn to better recognize emotions, both in myself and others. They also taught me a good deal about how to express my own emotions, although directly quoting song lyrics to do so (early teens) probably seemed really weird.