I've never heard the guy sing, but it's been a couple of decades since I've had more than minimal exposure to pop music. I know what he looks like, though, and on that basis I'd guess that he appeals primarily to a demographic of teenybopper girls. How old is Habermann's daughter?
Personally, I think everything "becomes more popular if it becomes more stupid" (and vice versa!). I say that with deliberately broad-stroked, tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but that correlation is the very definition of mass appeal. The masses aren't expected to be brilliant or sophisticated. And, perversely, when a rarefied niche interest does cross over to broader popularity, it tends to lose its cachet for the cognoscenti.
It's easy to feel that we're well on our way to idiocracy, but I suspect that it's always been that way. There's no accounting for taste, and even "elitists" are known to have guilty pleasures.
Topic: Justin Bieber