I always listen to my iPod when I'm driving, and have since high school. Thus I've managed to avoid most radio-fare. I guess the downside to this is sometimes I become insulated in my little musical bubble, and I don't hear about new music I do like as quickly. One annoying trend has been that a few of my friends have really gotten into dubstep recently (I don't know why). They play dubstep remixes of pop songs fairly often when I'm around, which is even fucking worse than either the original song or an original dubstep song. Thus I heard remixes of Whip My Hair, Party in the USA, and umpteen other pop/rap songs before I ever knew what they were. I still don't see the appeal.
I am almost more ashamed to admit that I can sing along to Bruno Mars Grenade, most Lady Gaga songs, and pretty much all Katy Perry songs. I don't seek them out, I have radio ADD and flip flip flip between stations neurotically, but I tell you that they are more addictive then crack. I guess the simplistic melodies makes them instantly memorable. I only listen to the radio on my drive to/from work (which is less than 15 minutes most days of the week, and up to an hour one day per week) and that is ALL it takes. Oh, and I actually enjoy Lady Gaga, I think she has some real talent as a singer/performer/songwriter. Yep yep.
I have Sirius radio and will check the top 40 channel, but generally I just see the name, listen to about 4 seconds of the song, decide it isn't up my alley and then change it to the other more specific stations. So mostly I just know the names of the pop artists, but have no frame of reference for there music. I will admit that I find myself enjoying some of the pop songs from time to time and will even stick with a mediocre one if the alt-rock stations are playing some shit band. There are still a few popular artists that elude me. One of them being Nikki Minaj (spelling). I hear about this chick, but don't think I have ever heard her solo work. I think she did a song with lil wayne or something. I refuse to seek her out though, because I know she is going to be retarded. Occasionally I will tune into the pop station and listen to all of the shitty music that is the soundtrack of the American empire crumbling and just let the rage and disgust boil inside of me until I feel like I just need to drive in complete silence for a while. I do this with political talk radio as well.
I still don't know what a Bieber song sounds like, so far I'm winning this race of impending doom. Apparently the Alt-Focus of this thread is Miley Cyrus- Party in the USA, and although the metal version was unique, it has nothing on the Biggie/Miley mashup: Ya it's more Biggie than Miley, but it's fucking cool, so just enjoy.
I don't generally know what's going on in "pop" music - the domain of commercialized anti-singing, autotune, narcissism and derivative tunes - but I do keep up with several genres of music* and therefore am reasonably up to date with music these days. In the word of a friend of mine, "I hate that I fucks with this." *(thanks to Malignity for the what.cd invite)
The most irritating part about "dubstep remixes" (aside from the fact that dubstep is terrible anyway) is that whatever is being remixed is displayed once at the very beginning of the "remix," and the rest is just a whatever dubstep track. When you remix something, you generally try to at the very least keep referring to it, not just slap on a single line from the movie and call it the "Alice in Wonderland dubstep remix."