Why is pop music the only art form that still inspires such arrantly stupid discussion?

-Sashe Frere-Jones, The New Yorker

There is a very simple answer to this–pop music is popular. So is stupidity.

Since pop music is popular, pop stars are glamorized and scrutinized in ways that other artists don’t have to deal with, or at least don’t have to deal with to quite the same extent. In the public eye, these people become more than just music makers. When conversation becomes vapid (as it always does when such a large group of people focus strongly on a single person) it extends past weight loss/gain, dating, social events, and other such things that have nothing to do with music to the music itself.