What if I can't pick up on key though? Like in the Fiona Apple song where she sings "Nothing's wrong when a song ends in a minor key" a few times towards the end, I assume that she's using a minor key, but hell if it registers as much of a difference to me because I don't really hear it outside of being more quiet. Same reason I never much CINECAST!ed with meter in poetry. Or what if, as I asked before, it makes me feel a completely different way or evokes a different understanding of what the piece is about? Certainly the way it makes me feel can't be wrong, even if I explain why it makes me feel that way as opposed to how someone else experiences a song. So, once again, the focus comes back to discussing timbre, rhythm, etc, which is a more specialized language, and is directly at odds with both my experience and what I'm listening for.
I generally don't listen to music for "meaning". Lyrics are usually the last thing I pay attention to. I just like a catchy melody, or a funky groove, or music that evokes a particular mood.
This, like I have been saying, is why music is the most subjective artform and all does come down to taste. Lyrics to me are typically the point of focus, or, at the very least, how the voice and lyrics become an instrument in the case of Young Thug's earlier work and early James Blake, but, again, lyrics aren't completely absent there.
You can remove one part from the other, but if you take away the instruments you still have poetry. Take away the words and all you have are a bunch of instruments. Which is fine if that's what you're in to, but I'm certainly not.
Listening for meaning or to experience art as I do with any other form (film, games, novels/plays, etc), the lyrics are key to reaching that meaning or fulfilling experience. When a song or album plays to that, it is good. Because you cannot have that without words, instrumental music is bad. In my opinion (which I figure is probably implied whenever someone writes a post).
The big issue is that I don't enjoy what other people enjoy? Somehow that is wrong or dismissive. I've explained the logical process behind my opinion, and have even mentioned during NMF before why some instrumental or just beat work is something I enjoyed, but nothing I'd go back to for this reason or for serious listening. Some sounds are pleasing to me, but that's instrumentation. Music, as best experienced, is the intersection point of instruments and lyrics, but lyrics are the lifeblood, instruments are a piece of the puzzle.
EDIT: Tangentially related, this is why the best Radiohead song is “Fitter, Happier.”