However, whether we're talking about French electronic and Japanese indie or K-pop and Spanish jazz, it's common for people to listen to songs they don't even understand.

Indeed, not knowing the language of the lyrics doesn't stop people from liking—and sometimes even singing along to—a song.

Just think about “Macarena” by Los del Río or the infamous “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee, later popularized by Justin Bieber (who doesn’t speak Spanish). And it's not about people who only speak English, either. Many people don’t, yet Megan Thee Stallion’s and Dua Lipa’s “Sweetest Pie” are still topping music charts around the globe. 

“It’s a complicated [topic],” ethnomusicologist Lisa Decenteceo, who teaches musicology at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told Vice adding that it all starts with what’s called “sound symbolism.”

Sound symbolism, according to Decenteceo, refers to the study of the relationships between utterances and their meaning. This doesn’t have to do only with music. Marketers, for example, can tune into sound symbolism as part of their strategy in coming up with appealing brand names. In music as well as in branding, Decenteceo explained, there’s something about the appeal of words as sounds, beyond their meaning in a language. 

“Most of the time, when listening to music in a foreign language, we enjoy the lyrics as sounds and not words,” Thea Tolentino, a music teacher and music therapy master’s student based in Melbourne, added.

While things like culture and personal experiences affect people’s responses to different kinds of music, Tolentino said there are certain musical techniques that are generally used to convey certain moods. One of which is scale, or the graduated series of notes, tones, or intervals dividing octaves.

“Songs in a major scale usually have brighter, happier sounds, while minor scales usually have the slightly darker, melancholic feel,” she said. 

Tolentino explained that the human brain is wired to respond to sound. In a process called entrainment, the brain “synchronizes our breathing, our movement, even neural activities [with the sounds we hear].”

This is actually the reason why fast-paced music is so popular for running or why some yoga teachers play rhythmic and melodic tracks during their classes.

Decenteceo, the ethnomusicologist, explained that “the music does something to the text,” from the way the words are sung, to the way the voice is used—for instance, “if the singing is raspy, if it’s shrill.” 

Plus, there are also the things that accompany the words. “Elements of sound and music like pitch, melody, harmony, timbre, and amplitude have an affective, emotional, psychological, cognitive, and even physical impact on listeners. Music adds so much meaning and dimension to texts through a complex of these avenues,” Decenteceo said.

What all these things do, said Decenteceo, citing the book The Sound of Nonsense by Richard Elliott, is liberate the words. “Song frees the voice from any burden of saying anything meaningful.”

In other words, elements in music like scale and melody combine with the plain sound of the lyrics to create meaning independent of the words’ dictionary meanings.

Therefore, it's important to understand music as a discourse between musical elements.

“The interrelationship of those musical aspects—there’s melody, there’s pitch—the combination of all those things coming together,” Decenteceo said. “There’s something to be said about not just the text, but how the text maps onto that.”

Of course, this isn’t to downplay the importance of the lyrics' linguistic meaning. Tolentino explained that, in music therapy, lyrics are powerful tools for helping people recognize, articulate, and reflect on their emotions.

And Decenteceo added that it's still important to look out for any wrongful or problematic messages in song lyrics.

Now if only we had a place to start... Something that highlights all the questionable things artists say in their tracks...