How modern Chinese singing works if Chinese has tones Since Chinese is a tonal language, I'm wondering how this affects Chinese singing. Specifically wondering about the modern Chinese version of modern American pop music, which has relatively simple structure and chords. But if Chinese lyrics require tone changes, it seems that somehow this must be incorporated into the music and yet distinguished from simple tonal changes in the music itself. So wondering how this is handled.

For example, if the music tones go up, but the word is going up too, not sure what happens. That sort of stuff. Maybe it is easy to tell from the context, I am not sure which is the reason for the question.
Short answer: Simply speaking, remove all the original tones of each character and follow the tune of the music. Yes it is hard to recognize if you never read the lyrics before, even for native speakers.