The reason I asked this in the first place is that last week I was teaching my Chinese ESL students about Western music through history. We started at about 1905 and went up to today. We talked about around 20 distinct genres--a pretty thorough list (if you can use "genres" at all) everywhere from jazz to blues to hip hop to "alternative" to folk to metal...
Anyway, we listened to probably about 40 songs, and I swear to God, the ONLY f*cking songs that they liked were by the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. It was so frustrating. Out of ALL these totally different types of music the only thing they wanted to hear more of was the f*cking kiddie-pop songs, and these are college students! I had one kid who had learned about punk music, and he really liked the Ramones, but otherwise...
I didn't like everything I played-- I do have a really diverse taste in music, but I just can't fit disco and pop and this country-pop stuff that's popular now... but, come on!! JUST the Backstreet Boys and Britney?!?
I mean this is a different culture and everything... but... wow... it's a little hard to be relative about living in a different culture when the only music that translates over is kiddie pop.

Rant ends here.