Do native speakers understand all the words in songs? [closed]

I'm wondering if native speakers understand all the words in songs. For me it is very very difficult, as I can usually understand only 30% of words and phrases in songs. While listening to people's conversations (e.g. podcasts) I understand much more, perhaps about 80%.

This was the first part of the question. The second part involves an example. Listen to this great song from Nick Cave. Do native speakers really understand all the words in this song? I mean without looking at the lyrics. Is it possible? He sings very fast and there are no spaces or pauses between the words, so I mostly "hear" isolated words, and the rest of the song is just some kind of gobbledegook.

Update

Let me explain why this question is not off-topic. It's closely related to English because in my native language (which is Russian) we always understand all the words in songs, I mean we understand more than 99% of words all the time. And I was wondering who's to blame. Is my English so poor that I can't fully understand all the words? Or is it just a feature of the English language, particularly in songs?

Solution 1:

The word Mondegreen was coined to refer to the way English speakers mis-hear lyrics and interpret them as meaning something else. The classic example is from Jimi Hendrix: "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy."

A quick check with Google for "lyrics" will turn up scores of websites that list the words to songs, attesting that few speakers can catch all the words to the music they hear. This is most likely common across most languages.

Solution 2:

I listened to the Nick Cave song you linked and only had a few issues the first time through. The second time through I got most of the rest. Only three or four times did I have to listen to a line over again a few times to understand the words, but I did get them.

I can see how the delivery would befuddle non-native speakers, though. To take just one example, he pronounces "dream" variously as "dreeyueem", "duhreeeeem", "duhraaaayyyyyumuh", etc. And that is one of the easy words to parse. Sometimes I can only identify a word or two in a line and have to infer the rest, but the inference is pretty clear and easy.

Others have mentioned a few cases of indistinct lyrics in mainstream songs, and I agree that there are some, but those are by far the exception and not the rule. Most songs I hear, if I listen closely I have no trouble understanding the lyrics. For example, I never thought Hendrix was singing anything but "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky." I was surprised when I discovered that there was any confusion about it at all.

Where I have trouble is in songs that are sung in various dialects of English. Take, for example, Desmond Dekker's "Israelites": I once played that song about 50 times in a row trying to parse all the words, and I'm still not certain of some of them.

I do notice that in the foreign languages I do understand, absolutely the hardest thing for me to parse is song lyrics. So at least you're not alone.

Solution 3:

Indeed they don't, and that is why mondegreens are more common in song lyrics than in other areas of English speech.

Solution 4:

I can't really answer your question from personal experience as I'm not a native English speaker either; but I can point out that the BBC comedy quiz program "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" used to have a round "Indecipherable Lyrics" in which the panelists were asked to figure out what the lyrics of a song are. (Of course, the program wasn't serious at all and the most indecipherable songs were selected.)

You can find some clips of the show on YouTube.