The Appeal of Lyricless Music

December 19, 2025

A warning: much of what’s in this post will seem obvious to a lot of readers. I’d ask you to keep in mind that when it comes to music, the things that seem obvious to one person may be very non-obvious to another.

I’m a big fan of music without lyrics. That isn’t to say I don’t like music with them. They just have very different appeals, and I think there are a lot of people who could appreciate the appeal of music without lyrics, but who have never been exposed to quality examples of it.

To me, the appeal of music with lyrics is that it’s a form of communication. Any song could have been an essay, or a novella, or a poem, yet the creator wanted to use notes and instruments and melodies to deliver more information to the observer that couldn’t otherwise be communicated, or at least couldn’t be communicated as well.¹ Musicals, which communicate story-telling, provide the most obvious examples of this appeal. For example, in Pierre & Anatole, a song from the musical Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, sharp electronic percussion is used to punctuate the argument between Pierre and Anatole. It crescendoes when their disagreement reaches a fever pitch, and vanishes suddenly when Pierre surrenders. The emotions and thoughts this induces in the listener could have been induced with prose, but it would have been more difficult, and the effect would not have been as pronounced.

Lyricless music, however, can only communicate contentful information via tapping into audience context. In Peter and the Wolf, we are taught to associate the eponymous wolf with the French horn, and so hearing parts of its lyricless soundtrack that contain the French horn alerts us that the wolf has become relevant to this part of the story. Recognizing a leitmotif like the wolf’s requires context, and only some works have access to enough time and space to provide that kind of context.

Roadwarden is one such example. It’s a game about a servant of Hovlavan, a once powerful city, which has tasked the servant to extract resources from the independent settlements of the North and bind them in unfair trade agreements. The theme of Hovlavan, which plays only at the very end of the game, is one of the most powerful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. The deep bass in the background is symbolic of empire, the ugly force of which you are an envoy. The song uses this instrument to remind you that no matter what kind intentions you wanted to extend toward the inhabitants of the North, the actions you took during the game will necessarily benefit your masters over those inhabitants. You are a pawn of greater powers, wearing a mask of friendship that you wish were real.

Then, just as it seems the song is wholly committed to this sobering message, it introduces at the 2:05 mark several chords that intersperse the instrument representing the North’s inhabitants with the instrument representing your character². At first those chords are sad, but the very last one sounds optimistic. This about-face is sudden and unexpected. It reminds you of all the times you were able to slip out from underneath the mask, and accomplish what little good you could for the inhabitants despite your tragic and unwanted role. Perhaps the North is worse for your coming, but the care with which you treated others was not meaningless. Then, the song marches onto its next verse, and the bass returns in full. The world is bigger than you are, and your impact on it will be a footnote next to the larger forces at play.

If you listen to the theme of Hovlavan and have not played Roadwarden, I doubt you would describe it as “one of the most powerful pieces of music you’ve ever heard.” I think you would describe it as a minimalist guitar piece, without many distinctive features. This is because Roadwarden has an entire game’s worth of time to establish its leitmotifs to its players, without which the most interesting facets of its soundtrack will lack that all-important audience context.

The bass is first used to represent Hovlavan’s imperial influence in Eudocia’s theme, a song which plays as you interact with a lonely enchantress. As your relationship with her builds, her theme morphs. At the start of the game, it is a cold and hesitant piece. By the end of the game, it is a warm and intimate one. Yet as the theme evolves in this positive direction, the bass also comes to play a larger and larger melodic role. The two of you both know the true purpose of your dealings in the Northern lands, and so a wall will always exist between you. So long as you are an arm of Hovlavan, your friendship will lack trust.

When the bass is used in the final song of the game, the audience will recognize it from Eudocia’s theme. And if the average audience member is anything like me, they’ll weep at the implication.

But that’s what lyricless music can accomplish when it can manipulate audience context. The vast majority of lyricless pieces can’t. To manipulate audience context, a lyricless song must be embedded in some larger medium. It must be a soundtrack to a movie or a video game, or a single movement within a larger symphony, or a perhaps situated within a larger cultural sphere with which the audience is familiar.³ Most lyricless songs are standalone works that do not have access to these contextual levers. How, then, do they communicate anything to the listener?

They don’t. The appeal of lyricless music, unless they’re one of the rare pieces that can manipulate audience context, has nothing to do with communication. Instead, they are primarily sensory/auditory experiences. The sound of the music itself is what is appealing.

If you think that sounds obvious, think again! There are plenty of people for whom this reason for listening to lyricless music is not. A brief list:

There are people who appreciate the sensory/auditory aspects of music, but for whom the draw is insufficient. Music must also have lyrically-delivered informational content—some kind of emotionally-laden message—in order for the sum total of its appeal to make it worth listening to. There are other activities they’d prefer to be doing otherwise! In fact, one of those activities could even be listening to music with lyrics.
There some people who listen to music with lyrics the way that I listen to music without lyrics. I once found Reddit testimony from someone who, as a youngster, would sing along to Anaconda because it was a “bop,” and never actually processed what the words were saying. Some people continue to interact with music lyrics in this same way into adulthood.
There are people who find that lyrics augment the sensory/auditory aspects of music. Personally, I find that experiencing the appeal of music with lyrics—i.e. absorbing its informational and emotive content—actively clashes with trying to experience its auditory/sensory components on their own merits. It’s like pulling my brain in two directions at once. But for many people, they experience no conflict whatsoever. To those in this category, lyricless music seems like a skeleton without any skin over it.

And of course, there are some people who would love lyricless music, but who don’t even realize that it’s out there. Maybe they’re vaguely aware. But they don’t know what the good songs are, or even where to start looking.

It’s those people whom I want to reach.

For anyone with whom the above description resonates, I’ve compiled this list. It’s a compilation of some of the best lyricless music I’ve ever encountered, for someone who wants to dive into this unfamiliar world for the first time.

The exception to this, of course, is Eurobeat, where the lyrics are intentionally meaningless. They do not play the same role as words do in an essay, novella, or poem. I would say that Eurobeat is actually much closer to most lyricless music in its goals, because the snippets of comprehensible English in its lyrics are meant to evoke particular feelings, moods, and desires, but are otherwise contentless noise. If you think about it, that’s basically the same job that a musical instrument is usually meant to accomplish.

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At least, I think that’s what those instruments are. The higher-pitched instrument is some kind of acoustic guitar, which I believe is first introduced in the game’s opening theme. It’s also possible that this guitar is a subtly different one that plays the melody of several other songs, which is slightly less easily interpretable as a representation of the player. The lower-pitched instrument sounds like a banjo, or perhaps a different style of acoustic guitar which the musician has chosen to play with fewer chords and more individually plucked notes. I believe that instrument is introduced in the song for Gale Rocks, a poor settlement near the sea that’s recently lost access to its primary export markets. It’s really hard for me to identify some of these string instruments by ear, since I’m primarily familiar with identifying woodwinds. I’m open to corrections if anyone is able to offer them. And if you’re Nick Roder himself, the composer of the soundtrack, I’d be even more open to corrections!

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A simple example: Undyne’s final fight theme from Undertale features ZUNpets, a trumpet-like instrument famous from its use in Touhou. Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, knew much of his audience would be familiar with ZUNpets, because the Touhou “sound” has penetrated into the wider anime fandom, and in turn entered the sphere of Tumblr-ites from which his audience is primarily drawn. Toby Fox is able to pay homage to Undyne’s love of anime by featuring ZUNpets in her theme, and this would not have been possible to accomplish if there weren’t a pre-existing audience context he could take advantage of!

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