The article explains recent British research that asked volunteers to study for a reading comprehension test either in silence, listening to pleasant pop songs, bombarded by heavy metal, or enjoying instrumental music. They then asked students to predict their performance and tested them on the material.
The results showed it didn't matter whether the learners listened to Katy Perry or Death Angel, their performance was significantly lower than students who studied in silence. Those who listened to music without lyrics also scored lower that those who studied in silence, but not by as much.
"Students who revised [that's British for studied] in quiet environments performed more than 60 percent better in an exam than their peers who revised while listening to music that had lyrics," reports the Guardian.
The reasons for this large gap in performance is called the "irrelevant sound effect" and in a piece for The Conversation, Nick Perham, one of the researchers behind the study, explains how music interferes with reading comprehension and memorization. Here is the whole article: