The traditional use of music you highlight really resonates with the way that I listen to music, incidentally. I joked recently with my roommate that for me, music is poetry with embellishments, while for him, it's drums with embellishments. Lyrical memorization has been a central part of how I've related to most of the music most important to me, too.
I suppose you're right, though. Most people engage relatively casually with music, and that's okay.
You're right that a lot of people seem to view lyrics as being at best an annoyance; I've seen multiple people on HN argue with a straight face that in order to translate a song from one language to another language, it's not necessary for the meaning of the new lyrics to be similar to the meaning of the old lyrics.
This is not a sense of "translation" that I'm familiar with for other linguistic phenomena.
I've also seen people take offense at the idea that the concept of a "song" might involve singing.
One of the most traditional - and important - uses of music was to preserve the oral record, which existed in musical form to make it easier to remember accurately.
I wouldn't expect novelty in music to be important to many people.