Re: are men more inclined to listen to song lyrics than women?

Dear Tobey, thank-you for your interesting question. Before I try to answer 
it, I would like to make several points.  Sex and gender are often used 
like synonyms, however the terms have different meanings. Sex is a 
biological determinant, while gender implies some psychological and 
sociological implications.  Sex differences are innate, chromosomally 
determined characteristics that distinguish males and females. However, in 
psychological sciences, gender differences refer to male or female traits 
that result from learning and social roles.  

A person’s reaction to music is influenced by many factors including age, 
mood, personality, situation or context, musical training, gender, 
familiarity with the music, and how much they like (or dislike) the 
particular piece.  However, this type of research is very difficult to 
carry out because our reactions to music are very subjective, difficult to 
measure and probably not very stable over time.  Thus research results are 
often inconclusive or contradictory.  Also, we should be careful about 
making broad generalizations about gender differences for any type of 
behavior because even if research suggests that differences exist, we 
really cannot make any accurate predictions about a specific individual. 
Having said that, here is what the research shows.   Women tend to have 
more positive responses to music than men.  They also tend to like 
classical music more than men, are less likely to study while music is 
playing than men, find music more distracting while they are reading than 
men,  but generally spend more time listening to music than men.  More specific 
to your question, some studies show that women rate the factors of lyrics 
and melody as being more important in terms of what music they like than 
men.  Men find instruments and peer influence as being more important than 
women in this regard.  One study found that women enjoyed
soft/nonrebellious rock music more than did men; and conversely, men 
enjoyed hard/rebellious rock music more than did women.  I did not find any 
studies that support the statement in your question.