John Denver was my favorite musician well past my teens. My brothers liked Queen and Frank Zappa, though, which I couldn't stand. When my next younger brother came to live with me, I got a chance to really listen to FZ all the way through and discovered I actually liked it - curse words and all. Much, much later, while channel surfing, I saw a clip of Freddie Mercury doing We are The Champions - I think it was from his last performance before he died. Electric. Now I'm a big fan of both (not that Queen is big into the cussin, but FZ certainly is).
I've long had the opinion that the vast majority of music is garbage. But it's not confined to any particular genre (is that the right word to use for music?). Another example: I was pretty convinced that rap was The Earthly Embodiment of Stupidity - but then I heard Baby Got Back and I tell ya - I really, really like that song. (It's still kinda stupid, but I do like it.)
Maybe you could have an assignment where they ask their parents for two songs that were THEIR favorites growing up and play the songs in class. Since most "music" of any particular style is crap, the students will have a much easier time finding something that's good if they're willing to try different things.
I had a coworker who sent to school at St. Olaf's. This is I think some catholic school where The Big Thing On Campus is their choir. It doesn't sound that interesting, but he loaned me some CDs. Skeptical is not the word. I was strongly antipathetic to wasting even two seconds on it, but I just popped it in one day and let it rip. Some of these can almost bring tears to your eyes. I listened to one of them all the way through several times (the CD, not just one song) before I realized these jokers weren't even using instruments. They made all that noise with just their natural equipment.
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