BS”D
What matters are the words. Yom Tov Ehrlich AH did not compose a single song and every street musician in Moscow used to play half the tunes he used for his songs because they are old Russian folk tunes. His niece Rebbetzin Dina Storch (Kaluzhoweveryouspellhermaidenname) used old American tunes for Someday and Daddy Dear.
On the other hand, we also have composers like Reb Chaim Banet, the Belzer baalei menagen, Reb Yankel Talmid AH (Ger) and Reb Moishe Goldman AH who sadly left us far too soon about a year ago IIRC, who may have used themes from Eastern Europe but their music has a true Yiddishe taam. Interestingly enough, the famous Habibi (not Shwekey’s but the more common one) seems to have been composed for both the words we know and secular lyrics simultaneously. Most of the other tunes from the Middle East and North Africa come from the popular music of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, before the complete end of Jewish life in that part of the world.
And some of those secular tunes were composed or made popular by Jews, like Salim Halali, the Bob Dylan of Morocco, or Samy El-Maghribi (real name Salomon Shlomo Amzalag, also left us within the past 2 or 3 years) a perfectly kosher Jew who was a hazzan in Montreal after a long career as a popular performer in Morocco and Paris. Today in Morocco there is a popular singer named Pinhas Cohen; sadly he is very far from Yiddishkeit and his wife is not Jewish.
Just as the US had Irving Berlin and the Gershwins, the Arab Jewish world was full of popular composers, the difference being that Berlin and their ilk were porkei ol malchus shamayim whereas the Jewish composers in Morocco etc stayed close to tradition until now (“Benhass” is not the only Jew I know who married out in Morocco – it is not a shanda anymore, unfortunately).
Pop music is pop music – but the words stick in the mind and neshomo, especially because composers are using less and less common psukim (Yedid, Ki HaTov, Shiru laMelech come to mind).
No reason to listen to secular words because we have enough music of our own.