As someone who knows very little about popular music in general, might I suggest to begin with that the kind of questions you claim to hear too much have one thing which a lot of the other questions don't: namely, a "hook" to hang the question on, which is to say a giveaway clue. A "one-hit wonder" has that clue, which is to say the hit; some of the other bands you mentioned have no such clue. (The one exception I note is the Cars, who would seem to have several such clues; however, I haven't noticed any shortage of Cars questions in tournaments, though I confess I wasn't exactly looking for them...) As for the question of genres, I suppose it's a matter of representation among question writers. I know that for my own part (as a non-popular music expert) I simply try to ask things which won't be picked out by those who DO know the subject as unworthy of questions, which leads me to base the general "canon" I write from on what I've heard of, in competition or elsewhere. I mean, there's no question that "yet another Beatles question" might be flagged as unworthy of being asked, but if I myself haven't heard of the band or musician (a common case with some of the styles you mention as underrepresented -- heck, I don't even know what some of those genres ARE!), I have no way of knowing who would or wouldn't answer it. The situation might be different with other people... --nielsen
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