My wife and I were talking about this subject yesterday and she mentioned a song being performed on tv and how utterly repetitive it was. You also mentioned the word “hook” and I recall Lionel Ritchie mentioning that word years ago as he felt it was a very important criteria for a hit song.
Although I’m not a classical music aficionado, I can certainly appreciate why people listen to it.
Nick, I think this is the reason, partly anyway. The so-called Miillennial Whoop" that repeats patterns of the 3rd and 5th major scale notes I didn't even know they had a term for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_whoop.
It's bad enough that pop music lyrics nowadays is so vacuous, shallow, and repetitive, the form and structure are just samples of samples and are utterly devoid of any musical development or dynamics. It is always the lowest common denominator, most brainless, easiest to access, and "repetitive hook' within the first few seconds. Not that young kids listen to music anyway - It is always just background music while surfing, gaming, or consuming or creating social media.
And I don't think it is just me being from an "older generation." I've listened to a lot of horrible music in my time (e.g. punk, heavy metal, j-pop [!]) , but at least there was a semblance of originality.