This study examined the effectiveness of teaching phoneme categorization and segmentation to EFL underachievers using songs and rhymes as instructional materials. Two distinct groups of 11th-grade EFL underachievers from Taiwan participated in this quasi-experimental study. The instructional materials consisted of lyrics sourced from online resources of the British Council. The quantitative tool employed in this study was a questionnaire based on National Reading Panel's Assessment of Phonemic Awareness tool, and qualitative data were analyzed. In terms of results, there was a small positive effect when using song-lyrics instruction to help EFL underachievers understand phoneme categorization, song-lyrics instruction did not significantly improve EFL underachievers' understanding of phoneme segmentation, and EFL underachievers provided positive feedback on song-lyrics instruction during interviews. This study is likely to encourage educators and researchers to explore the potential advantages of using song-lyrics instruction to enhance learners' English listening skills.