I'm properly the minority here, but I usually value lyric on the same level as the actual music itself, if not a bit more. Sure there are songs I absolutely don't care for the lyric (read: 99.9% of the so-called current Chinese pop songs), but most stuffs I listen both for the music and the story behind the melody. This is coming from someone who's a fan of Sound Horizon though, where the song is an actual story and half the meaning of the song is lost if the lyric can't be understood by the listener.
(RADWIMPS's Order Made is a good example. It have a nice music, but one of the reasons why it was the top selling single on Oricon the week after its released was the lyric.)
It's very rare that I'll like a song without really paying attention to its lyric. (I can count all those out with two hands... ._. )