I don't have a solution yet, but wanted to add some associated behavior:
If you right click on a song anywhere and say, "Show in Playlist", it will show that playlist but change the view from whatever you had set to Playlist format. You then have to go back to the View menu and say View as Songs. But next time you repeat that, it will switch the playlist view into View as Playlist again.
If you use the AppleScript command "set view of front window to playlist" it will force that view into Playlist mode even if set to Songs before. Setting it back fixes it until you run that AppleScript again.
I consider this a bug that needs reporting.
(It's also frustrating that they keep changing things like that, but still won't fix issues like the extremely slow response of the Find field with a large song list.)
PS- The work-around for AppleScript is to add this:
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Music"
-- open the View menu and click “As Songs”
click menu item "As Songs" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
end tell
end tell
