Thanks for feedback! Super-nice of you!
I think I might have missed the proper intention when writing the rules. Due to short time in the jam, it didn't go through blind playtesting, only with me explaining, alas, some things should certainly be more stressed.
Anyway, during a shanty phase, there is only one card possible on a middle stack from any single player. When the round gets back to the shantyperson the cards should be relocated (to decks or, preferably, to bounties) -- they leave the middle of the table, and there should be less doubling (or also I might have misunderstood about what happened in your case).
But it is also true that the game isn't spoil-proofed well, and if there will be a lot of doubles put, maybe intentionally, to the table, the process will indeed end quite slowly.
Your lyrical suggestion probably strongly depends on the group playing. It seemed to me that in practice, a lot of players already have some troubles with coordination of rhythm-text-cards, and more text could be more pressure on that front. But you may have a talented group! :)