Is Europe really so cultured?

They're so cultured, so well-learned, etc. but their pop music is as dumb as ours and more streamlined toward being utterly basic and awful. True, it's more innocent, but it's also enough to drive you mad. Maybe the problem is popular culture itself, or the idea that getting 4 million people to like anything requires it be dumbed down, or for 500,000 to enjoy Beethoven and the others to try to follow along.