Pop Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word

We're studying secondary dominants in theory right now and Prof. Long has been making a lot quippy remarks about pop music. Today however was the cherry on the sundae. I feel I should mention that Prof. Long is a composer and holds a fancy doctorate in something pertaining to music (I don't remember whether it's theory or composition.) To Prof. Long pop starts are illiterate idiots who degrade the artistry of music. I sighed heavily and closed my eyes every time he mentioned pop today, mainly because I was thinking of skipping today's class and was wishing I had. You see I wish I could immerse myself in pop at all times and really want to spend the rest of my life listnening and studying pop music. Yes the people who perform pop music can be considered the equivalent of trained monkeys (I'm thinking of Britney Spears and her ilk when I say this) but the people who write pop songs are every bit as sophisticated as classical composers. A person can't write a good pop song without knowing what they're doing. Singer-songwriters may not get a formal education in theory (most of the time anyway) but they know what they're doing. They have to. You can write mediocre crap and get no where very quickly in the music business. It takes skill and a thorough understanding of pop music to really get anywhere in the business (at least the mainstream business.) Writing off pop music as the domain of idiots is like accusing Judy Bloom of not being a good writer. Pop shouldn't be a dirty word in the world of music.