The Attention Cost of Lyrics: Why Words Break Deep Work

What the studies found

This is one of the few things about background sound that is well supported. A review of 65 studies on reading with sound in the background found that every kind had a small cost, and that the worst were speech you can understand and music with lyrics.

A smaller experiment looked at attention directly and found that music with lyrics hurt concentration. The authors' advice was plain: if there is going to be music at work, make it music without words.

Why words get through

You can't choose to ignore language. If someone says your name across a noisy room, you hear it. Words in a song get the same treatment: part of you works out what they mean, whether you want that or not.

Reading and writing use the same machinery. So the words in your ears and the words on the page end up competing. The review's authors lean towards this explanation too: it is the meaning that interferes.

When lyrics are fine

When the task has no words in it. Tidying files, formatting, laying out a page, washing up. There is nothing for the lyrics to compete with, and music you like makes dull work go faster.

The trouble is that most desk work switches between the two kinds all day. I wrote about that in Sound for Coding and Sound for Reading vs Writing vs Email.

What to play when the work is words

Removing the lyrics is the first step and the biggest one. Instrumental music still has a beat and a tune, which are their own kind of pull. I looked at that in Is a Beat the Enemy of Concentration?

What I use is sound with no words, no tune and nothing that loops. That is what I built Ambient Sound Online to be, because I couldn't find it elsewhere.

Sources

• Vasilev, Kirkby and Angele, 2018: review of 65 studies on background sound and reading
• Shih, Huang and Chiang, 2012: background music with and without lyrics, and attention