How do you hear music?

I was talking to a coworker recently about how we hear music and I thought it was really interesting. There was a song playing at work and he was telling me there was a great lyric coming up and I had to really concentrate on the singer to hear what he was singing. We got talking about why and I mentioned that my brain processes the music and base lines but not the vocals-mostly of songs I don’t know. I told him I can’t understand a word being said, it almost sounds like gibberish unless I concentrate on the vocals. He is the opposite, he can hear vocals clearly but can’t really point out base lines or different instruments. Idk I thought it was interesting and curious if others had noticed this.