Yes, here's the big one:
The more complete the acoustic picture your brain is provided with by the recording, the easier it is to focus on whatever may be your mental target of interest. The talkers are still there, but are perceptually located elsewhere than the music, allowing you to "hear around them" and keep concentration on the music via the "cocktail party effect".
Mono is most difficult in that sense because all sound sources are mixed together and emanate from a single source location on playback. Stereo provides for very useful mental separation of sources, as well as direct and reverberant sound, multichannel surround even more so to a much greater degree.