The rock snob pop hater would say:
Chord changes are predictable
Not enough chords used.
Can't play instrument
Girl can't sing.
Dudes are gay(i.e Backstreet Boys. I like "I Want It That Way" and "Shape of My Heart" and I consider haters insecure men who are made other men have much higher mate value then them. I am not insecure, so I don't care that I like a boy band. The lyricism is all that matters and it pleases me)
I listen to the radio a lot, but not broadly. I don't go up and down the dial, I listen to "my" radio station mostly, the one I've been a DJ on since 1980,
KALX, Berkeley.'' Very eclectic station, 24/7, at UC Berkeley. I do a 3 hour show once a week.
I'll turn the radio off if I don't like what a DJ is doing, specifically, on many occasions because I ask myself the question: Do I want to hear this song? This selection? Is this worth my time? So much of modern pop music sucks, IS boring. Rick Beato has done videos on this topic and explains,
for instance this. He's very deep in music theory with decades of music production experience. Myself, I'm not that as analytical. Many times I have a sense that there's no excitement, no inspiration, that a song came into being not because an artist was inspired one way or another but because they felt compelled to create a track for their latest album, single or addition to their catalogue. Many songs strike me as not new creations at all, but just a rehashing of a trend or style with nothing added of significance.
I have little patience for synthesizer work a lot of the time. There are so many bands that use real instruments that are populated with musicians with real chops, many with virtuosos. Why listen to some Pablum pale imitation or worse when you could be listening to the real thing?
And there's the autotune thing recently. Industry has people hypnotized, tend to kill and part of that is the music industry, much of which tends to kill innovation, is all too often afraid of real excitement.