What is popular music?

Throughout recent history popular it has meant ’low of base, vulgar or of the common people’, ‘courting favour of the people by undue practices‘, ‘widely favoured‘, a synonym for good and ’from and of the people’.  Anaid Kassabian says that popular means that it’s unmediated yet all forms of music, except pure voice, involved technology in the form of a musical instrument. A main theme of discussion was the difference between popular music and art. Robert Burnett said that popular music is commercially orientated and commercial is defined as being concerned with money over artistic or any other value.  The elitists thought that Nessum Dorma by Pavorotti, what is considered to be the best piece of classical music of all time, was somehow cheapened by the fact that it reached number one in the UK singles chart as a result of it being used for the theme song for the BBCs coverage of the 1990 world cup.