"Prima la musica e poi le parole" or first the music and then the words.  This is the title of an opera by Salieri, who in the play and film Amadeus was supposed to have killed Mozart.  Of course the music is important, but if the words in a song didn't matter, the composer would simply have written "la la la".  The words do matter, and it's our responsibility as singers to put them across well, whether they're in our own language, or one we don't even speak.

Many people think it's just a question of "spitting out the consonants", but it's actually the vowels that carry the singing sound.  If you only focus on the consonants, all we'll get is a lot spitting and not much singing.

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