For me my poor English becomes an advantage here - I can listen to rock music and completely ignore lyrics, if they are in English and I don't deliberately focus on them. But if the radio starts playing something in my own language then it becomes distracting, even if I heard the song hundreds times before.
I think I'm convinced that the difference is how well I know the music - listening to the radio is all songs that I've heard hundreds of times, so I don't think I'm subconsciously spending effort listening to the lyrics since I know them already?