Exploration of the Value and Practical Path of Pop Music in Contemporary Music Education

In the current era of multicultural integration, popular music has injected fresh vitality into traditional Music education with its advantages of being close to life and having strong infectiousness. Based on the policy orientation of the "Compulsory Education Music Curriculum Standards (2022 Edition)" and combined with the research data of the Music education Professional Committee of the Chinese Education Society in 2023 (covering 1,730 middle school students in 12 provinces and cities across the country), this paper explores its core values in activating learning interests, cultivating diverse artistic literacy, and inheriting cultural genes, and analyzes the current problems of insufficient teaching staff and imbalanced content screening in teaching. Based on literature research and case analysis, feasible practical paths are proposed from the dimensions of curriculum optimization, teaching method innovation, and faculty development to help the deep integration of the two and practice the aesthetic education purpose of "educating people through aesthetics". The experiment conducted by Chaoyang District Teaching and Research Center in Beijing shows that scientific integration can raise students' classroom participation rate by more than 40 percentage points, providing solid reference for Music education reform.