Take the 2-minute tour ×  I'm wondering if native speakers
understand all the words in songs? For me it is very very
difficult, as I can understand only 30% of words and phrases in
songs usually. While listening to people's conversations (e.g.
podcasts) I understand much more, perhaps about 80%.  This was
the first part of the question. The second part involves an
example. Listen to this great song from Nick Cave. Do native
speakers really understand all the words in this song? I mean
without looking at lyrics. Is it possible? He sings very fast
and there's no spaces and pauses between words, so I mostly
"hear" separated words, and the rest of song is just some kind
of Abracadabra.   Let me explain why this question is not off-
topic. It's closely related to English because in my native
language (which is Russian) we always understand all the word in
songs, I mean we understand more than 99% of words all the time.
And I was wondering is my English so bad that I can't fully
understand all the words in English,