iTunes Not Transferring Metadata for Certain Tracks When Transferring to iPhone

This is driving me crazy. I'd appreciate any help you can give.

I’m using the latest version of Mojave with iTunes fully updated to v 12.9.4.94 with an iPhone 8 also with the latest software.

I edit metadata in audio tracks using a third-party metadata editor. This is not a key fact, however, as I have this problem regardless of whether I use a third-party editor or edit the metadata in iTunes itself.

Let’s select Ura’s “Entertainment” album as an example.

I load the tracks from this album into iTunes. iTunes is set to allow me to manually manage my music.

The metadata for the album shows in the Track Info section of each track. In short, everything looks perfect.

Without playing any of the album tracks in iTunes, I manually drag the entire album to my iPhone 8. 

Using iTunes and looking at my phone's music, I can see that the album has successfully transferred over to the phone.  I then look at the Music app on my phone and it shows all of the metadata is intact.

The problem begins here: Now, I start the album transfer process again, only this time I play the first track on the album in iTunes before dragging the album over to the phone.  This time the album appears on the phone as having the metadata deleted from the track I was playing, although the album art is intact..  See the attached/below .jpg.

Any other tracks that I play in iTunes before dragging over to my phone also have their metadata wiped out.

To make matters stranger, if I play tracks from one album, then play tracks from a second album and then immediately transfer the first album, the first album's metadata transfers OK. But if I drag the second album over, the metadata is wiped out.

If anyone has experienced this weird and intensely annoying problem, could you let me know if there is a fix?  Thanks very much.