Siri incapable of finding songs by name iOS 18.5 - iOS 26.0.1

I originally posted this question here, but I am no longer allowed to post on my own topic, so here I am again, with some updates to the problem I am still facing with Siri. I have also put a bounty up on StackExchange for anyone that might want to help over there. On with the post....

I often use Siri to play songs on my iPhone 12 Pro while driving. After recently updating to iOS 18.5, and then now to 26.0.1. Siri always responds with:

"I couldn't find SONGNAME in your Apple music Library".

Despite that I can manually navigate to said files and play them with Apple Music. On previous versions of iOS this was not a problem and worked 99% of the time.

All the music is stored on my phone and I do not use any subscription services to access music. I can still use Siri to play songs via playlists, just not individual song names like I used to.

There is chatter about this issue in this subreddit but nothing substantial, only mentions of other users having similar issues with 18.5. I was hopeful the big 26.0.1 update would solve this, but alas the problem persists (actually worse).

Steps I have tried to remedy the problem:

• In another subreddit a users suggests toggling in Iphone settings:

Settings > Apps > Music > Show Apple Music, but doing this had no effect.

• I also tried restarting my phone but that didn't work either.
• Synching all songs and playlists from Itunes on PC with the latest versions of Itunes and iOS installed.

None of these worked.

Does anyone know how I can restore the original functionality of Siri to be able to ask it to play specific songs?

UPDATE 10-21-2025 -

After updating to iOS 26.0.1 and the problem persists, but is now even worse. Siri will now play the wrong songs, and still says most of my songs it can't find. Is Apple's mission here to make its AI worse with each update?