But if you are going to claim its an actual genre, like I've seen many do, then you will need to provide a description of the style that manages to include what people generally consider pop while excluding what they don't. And I've yet to see someone succeed. Because pop isn't a genre.

This is impossible for any musical genre that isn't effectively dead. Genres change over time as artists experiment. Hip hop today isn't hip hop from the 90s, but both are hip hop. Rock in the 90s was different from rock in the 60s, and both are different from you'll see released by rock bands in 2022.

Pop isn't just a genre, it has tons of subgenres - bubblegum pop, synth pop, dance pop, hyperpop, K-pop, J-pop - that have distinct differences. There's crossover with other genres sometimes (which is also true of every other genre), but not all popular music is pop, and not all pop is popular.

> Identifying factors usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to.

BTW, Wikipedia also draws a distinction between "pop music" and "popular music", where the latter is defined as you describe.

John Peel's show on Radio 1 in the UK was practically the definition of counter-culture music at the time, yet that was the mainstream music radio station.

We don’t need another semantic battle over who gets to gatekeep what defines a genre. It’s all subjective but you can also get the gist on the general case pretty easily.