Does authorial intent matter?

I got into a discussion about this subject recently with my brother. I was saying that if you just listen to the music, there's not a ton of difference between something like Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and H. Jon Benjamin's Well I Should Have Learned How to Play Piano album. Miles made his record as a serious exploration of jazz modes and whatnot, while Benjamin made his as a joke, surrounding himself with real musicians while he himself took lead playing piano despite not knowing how to play piano. I contended that there's not much difference, as a listener, if you didn't know the artists intent. My brother said that the intent is what colors everything and is super important to know what the artist was trying to say.

So I bring this discussion to movies because it's very similar. If David Lynch always keeps his intent a secret to himself about what his surreal, dreamlike movies mean, then that can mean that whatever meanings we read into it is our own, we create the meaning. Then I would ask: what is the point of the artists vision and intent if I'm the one creating the meaning?

I remember doing a project in high school where we presented song lyrics like poetry and broke them down the way we would break down a poem. One of the other students picked the Goo Goo Dolls song "Iris". They eventually explained the title as meaning that the iris is the center of the eye and the girl in the song is the center of this guys world, bringing the lyric "I don't want the world to see me" as well as the lyrical themes of perception and reality back to the image of the eye. Not a bad interpretation, fits perfectly to be honest, but I'd heard John Rzeznik say that the title Iris had no meaning whatsoever and he just liked the way it sounded. Obviously that doesn't mean that that student's interpretation was "wrong", because it was their own interpretation, but if it wasn't what the artist intended, then what does that mean as far as the connection that the students' interpretation had made in their mind and heart?

I think it's an interesting question and wanted to see what any of youse guys had to say on the subject. We've talked about it before, but it's an important discussion so I think it's okay for it to be brought up again every once in a while. Does the intent of the author of a piece of art matter?