Who Put the "Pop" in Pop Music? I appreciate the valid criticism of invoking mumblers and misanthropes like Waits. (Costello, however, is surely pop music, even if he has lately wandered awfully avant garde.) Pop is notoriously tricky to pin down. Hoagy Carmichael was pop -- in his day:

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights
Dreaming of a song
That melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
Ah, but that was long ago
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song

And so was Antonio Jobim:

How insensitive I must have seemed when she told me that she loved me
How unmoved and cold I must have seemed when she told me so sincerely
Why, she must have asked, did I just turn and stare in icy silence?
What was I to say? What can you say when a love affair is over?

But Robert Johnson never was

Now six and two is eight
Eight and two is ten
Friend-boy she trick you one time
She sure gonna do it again

even though a bunch of white British guys made a mint running his songs up and down the pop charts.