It isn't a circular definition that he's giving so much as reductive (i.e. not high cultural). The reason I think you definition fails is that it ignores popular music in most of music history. While this would often be called folk music I think there is certain stuff that was regionally very popular and did not require a middle class to consume it or indeed that the artist make very much at all. This music was literally popular but did not require a middle class. Conversely the more useful definition in my view is the stylistic one. Music emerging not from higher cultural trends (so called art music) but from the people generally (folk music) and those things that are derivative from it. The popular music you speak of is music that comes from these roots (and very specifically southern poor black roots and to a lesser extent southern poor white roots). This stuff is popular music regardless of whether it is actually popular in and of itself. In order for it to be widely disseminated I'll grant you a middle class is required (or at least a class with disposable income).

Which I think is the problem with your claim.

The Stone Roses s/t is insanely boring, amelodic elevator music.

You're really bad at this thread, Cruz.

bill evans > isaac newton

The lack of booze is having an adverse effect on Cruz's mental faculties.

i don't think this is an unpopular opinion, at least i've never hung out with anyone that prefers to talk about newton instead of evans

Hendrix isn't the best.

Here's one. Music liked by the masses and 'top dogs' of DDD isnt automatically good music.

Case in point : Tangerine Dream's Phaedra. Screw that album for making me give it more tries than I've ever given an album !!

That was the album that broke me out of my "every song needs a bitchin' guitar solo" phase.

Since I grew up in India with Bollywood music, thankfully I've never had that. Also, that almost translates you to never having heard a pop album or liked a pop album till then ?

Nah, it was just a two year phase that began when I heard Led Zeppelin for the first time at age 13. The phase was over around age 15. Before I was 13 I was into pop and hip hop and rock and other stuff, I just kind of stopped listening to all of it (except rock) when I was 13.

A lot of people on DDD speak about this musical "evolution" they supposedly go through, where their taste follows a linear path closer to some mystical point of musical enlightenment. But I don't think that's necessarily true. I guess hopefully you have a better understanding of how music works as time goes on, but taste is not necessarily a linear path. I can say without a doubt that I was more open-minded with my taste as a 10 year old than a 14 year old.

Well ten year olds aren't ALL retards unlike 14 year olds

For sure. I'm more embarrassed of myself as a music fan as a 14 year old than I am as a 8 year old when I asked for and received No Strings Attached by Nsync for Christmas - not because of the music I listened to but because of the way I acted when I thought Metallica were the height of music. I was a cunt.

Ah I remember that phase. I don't know where it came from, really, because I was a fan of classic rock before I adopted that frame of mind and I didn't really notice the guitar solos. It seemed inconsistently applied too, given that Electric Six were one of my favourite bands at the time and the majority of their songs were sans solos. I properly snapped out of in late '06 early '07 when I started listening to bands like Stars.

I still loves me a bitchin' guitar solo, though.