Originally Posted by gianluca

As I expected, those youtube examples of supposedly good pop music did not impress me at all...

True, Brian Wilson is slightly more talented than most pop songwriters and he does seem to show an original harmonic and melodic language within the conventions of the pop song format. I also think Paranoid Android is definitely one of the better and more creative pop songs out there. But the other examples really didn't have very much musical substance. They struck me as typical, uninteresting and conventional pop songs.

Come on, you would be seriously (and painfully naively) fooling yourself to believe that that kind of pop music has the same artistic merit and depth as this music:
YouTube - St.Matthew passion bwv 244 conducted by gustav leonhardt
or this: YouTube - Beethoven Symphony No.9 - Bernstein 1989 (part 1)
or this: YouTube - STRAVINSKY : Rite Of Spring - (V.Gergiev) '07 (1/2)