Hi Cor,
You are correct that Xpath data sources are always executed on the database. The only way for the lists to show new data is to retrieve new entries from the database. Refreshing the object without committing will not show your changes because when you refresh, the XPath is executed again against the contents of the database.
To populate your data using objects changed in memory but not yet committed you will need to use the 'association' database source This will allow you to change your associations and refresh it without going to the database.
There will be one final piece to the puzzle, however: how can you keep track of the songs that do not have the association yet? The default association data source will not let you use logic like not(playlist_song)… since that function is executed in SQL on the database by Mendix when you write your XPaths. You will need to do something a little clever to get around that, like building another association between your playlist and song called 'notselected' and upon opening up the playlist page, you put set the association for all songs that are NOT on the playlist. Then when the user is on the page you will have two clean associations to use for your list views.