The fantasy versus reality split in popular music is arbitrary taste grading.

Evidence

Culture, however, is never singular and univocal. It is, like nature itself, multiple, various, and varietal. It is this for each of us. Therefore, we must begin, following Schutz (1970), from the assumption of multiple realities. Mass communication research generally begins from the assumption of some hard existential reality beyond culture and symbols to which human imaginative productions can be referred for final validation. It is comic to see this argument in analyses of, for example, popular music in which commercial love songs are defined as fantasy and blues or war protest songs as reality (Carey, 1972; Hayakawa, 1957). The difference between these forms is not that one is real and the other fantastic but, rather, that they reflect the tastes of audiences for different modes of casting up experience. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 325

Categorization

• SEED: The love-songs-as-fantasy vs. blues-as-reality critique is a pointed example usable in writing about music criticism and cultural valuation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 325