genius (oxford) ....special mental endowments, exalted intellectual power, instinctive and extraordinary imaginative creative or inventive capacity...

If Bob Dylan or Neil Yonge dont have this , I dont know who does...OK Maybe not the mental endowment parts , but extraordinary instinctive imaginative creative capacity,
no question, especially the instinctive part, which is paramount to pop music and maybe different from the more cerebral classical (sorry formal) music.

I dont mind using the term for pop musicians , but I use it very sparingly ( I can see another top 10 list in the future)...Generally, I also agree with the article , but I dont like the typical backhanding to pop stars that is always associated with this position...for instance the put down on Tommy or the Wall , which are very creative within the genra of pop music..but I guess when sir Paul and the like try these embarassing musical experiments , they do a diss service to pop music in general, which does fine on its own without this bullshit search for musical depth,
that only seems top affect the top most pinacle of pop stars, such as Sting and Paul and thats likely because they cannot live in the real world anymore because of their extremes of sucsess...
Fianally, Brian, try driving up a beautifull snowy road in north ontario listening to Sibelius violin concerto and one could argur that the mirror of life to music applys to all forms, perhaps I'm a litle simplistic with the analogy , but you get my drift (so to speak)