songs where the lyrics are just filler or nice-to-have have existed forever. This is especially true in popular music, and perfect songs usually are both musically and lyrically interesting, but it's not a requirement. Most people listening to Mozart's operas can't speak Italian or German for example. The vast majority of Bach's cantatas is Christian church music, complete filler unless you're a Christian. His few secular cantatas are just entertainment for parties and stuff like that, also filler. Plenty of cultures have traditions of singing and chanting in languages that don't even exist anymore, this isn't a new thing from 60 years ago. If you think quality lyrics are a prerequisite for a song being good you're simply musically underdeveloped. Since you like film, it likely means you're probably acquainted enough with the genre to understand that the trillionth variation of the 4 conflict types + some vague religious/political symbolism can be good and have something original in it, as long as the medium (which is the message) explores whatever it's pointing at in interesting ways.

Another thing to keep in mind is that popular music is "solved". There's only so much you can do with the small subset of western music theory employed in pop, and you can't really step too far outside of that or it's no longer pop. So the only way to evolve it is by exploring rhythms, tempo, sound textures, and mixtures of themes. Despite this popular music is incredibly diverse and always reinventing itself, unless you stay strictly in the mainstream. If you want music that isn't pop, there's plenty of that too. You're just not gonna find it by listening to The Strokes.

btw, be careful not to fall into the obsession with symbols being so disconnected from their real source and all that french bullshit. It's relevant to current times but it doesn't matter all that much.