Have you read the new Paul Simon album?

Songwriting is a starkly literal term, but has evolved over time to include filmic atmospheres (also a department of the textual, as it comes from narratives and storytelling). Songwriting was more effective when you could simply pay attention to the words, and perhaps read them in the album sleeve, but alas words have become more like data over the past few decades. (Could it be the typing of words, even if dictating has changed the power of words, as it relates to how we used words in songwriting?). Language is innately musical, but typed words are not, even if placed on separate lines. So that's why its recitation is so powerful, even in the dulcet tones of Simon's voice.

Recitation of words pulls the music out of merely typed words, or even words read silently.