People hate Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, etc. Why? Because (a) it's popular (God forbid!) and (b) it's manufactured.
Manufactured: it was designed to be liked by fans, not the performers.
Good!
Music is to be enjoyed. The more people who like it, the better it is. The music industry is a service industry. They're not supposed to make music for themselves but for the people they're serving: the listeners.
Okay, so the musicians may not have "poured their hearts" into the music, but does that make it worse? If so, why is it so popular?
Yeah, it targets the LCD but many people prefer Britney Spears to any "real" group. Sure, it's good to have stuff not targeting the LCD but that doesn't mean not manufactured, just that different groups are manufactured for different audiences.
Maybe "artistic integrity" is a nice thing to have around, but that doesn't make it better than the rest.
You think Limp Bizkit isn't manufactured? Korn? You're deluding yourself. Hanson, now there's a band that's not manufactured.
re: kareneliot: You're right. My writeup is wrong, but I'll gladly take on the shallowness argument. The canned anarchy/angst/whatever that Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Eminem, etc., is as shallow as anything BSB or Britney Spears puts out. What do they say that's insightful? Original (idea-wise)? This is music: it's meant to affect people emotionally more so than just intellectually. Intellectual (or meaningful, or whatever "non-shallow" mandates) content is an added bonus, but not the main point, and not totally foreign to what most people consider pop.
Note: This is an old, old writeup, which could be destroyed at any time with no loss to E2.