There's a Bob Dylan quote (no doubt misquoted by my senior memory), that when someone asked him what one of his songs was about, he replied "About two and a half minutes." Susan Sontag covers the same territory in "Against Interpretation."

On an emotional level the poetry of lyrics means more than would an explanation re-phrased as a paragraph from a work of philosophy. Add in music and you have even more non-verbal signification. I wouldn't want to write a Study Guide about "Whiter Shade of Pale," but I know exactly how the lyrics plus music make me feel.