Popular music is objectively untrue and helps to maim the consciousness of those exposed to it.

Because it is so crudely simple, however, the standardization of that music should be interpreted not so much intramusically as sociologically. It aims at standardized reactions, and its success – notably its adherents' fierce aversion to anything different – proves that it has gained its end. It is not only the interested parties, the producers and distributors of pop music, who manipulate the way it will be heard; it is the music itself, so to speak, its immanent character. It sets up a system of conditioned reflexes in its victim, and the crux is not even the antithesis of primitivity and differentiation. Simplicity in itself is neither an asset nor a shortcoming. But in all music that deserves the name of art, every detail, even the simplest, would be itself; none would be arbitrarily interchangeable …