[hashmush]

From my understanding Mandarin has a lot of two-syllable words and in many of the words the second syllable doesn't add much, if any, additional meaning.

Contrast that with Cantonese, which I believe still uses a single syllable for most words. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong)

So it makes sense with less tones, because you have more syllables to disambiguate.

[hnfong]

> which I believe still uses a single syllable for most words

Not sure about "most" (depends on the sample distribution I suppose), but single syllable (i.e. character) words are used much more often relative to Mandarin.

So in general you're probably right. Not sure whether that is a cause of more strict adherence to tones in songs though. It could be alternatively argued that the more complex syllable (due to more tones among other things) in Cantonese allowed it to retain single syllable words without having to add extra syllables to clarify any ambiguities.

[hashmush]

> It could be alternatively argued that the more complex syllable (due to more tones among other things) in Cantonese allowed it to retain single syllable words without having to add extra syllables to clarify any ambiguities.

Yes, pretty much.