The words should be the most important component.


..... if you can't hear the words how can the story fit together?


That may be true only in the narrow world of folk music.

The popularity of opera, sung in Italian, German or whatever, amongst anglophones suggests that only the most basic grasp of the story-line is required for enjoyment. The words are important. but for their musicality rather than their meaning. My father-in-law always preferred to listen to opera in the original language as he reckoned that translations put the "ee"s, the "oo"s and the "ah"s in the wrong places as the music went high or low. For him, this outweighed the need to follow the plot within the song itself.

In other genres, words are less important. The lack of a good story line never held back Little Richard.

DC