I agree with you, what is a song?...by defintion it's melody and lyric.

I mean you have to be recording SOMETHING, you're not recording NOTHING, at the end of the day your song is your melody and lyric.

BUT, arrangment, performance, production are all inexstricably linked . Imagine Stairway to heaven just strummed all the way through, none of that beautiful picking. Still be a nice song, but not the same. Imagine a halfway decent singer as opposed to Robert Plant. Still nice, but not the same...or ANY singer for that matter. Sometimes it seems there is only ONE singer to sing a song, you get so locked in on that.

And why is it that when people cover The Beatles, they NEVER sound better, even today.