I'm inclined to disagree. My aim here wasn't to educate students on what music is popular or unpopular in the west, nor to hope that they'd start following the Mars Volta, but to have them listen to very different styles of music and use their knowledge of English to work out which they were listening to. My aim here was to improve their knowledge of the language of music and how it is described. Lady Gaga, Kings of Leon and Eminem are essentially pop artists and have more similarity with each other than Fanfare Ciocarlia, Joanna Newsom & Venetian Snares. The students already know their genre and would have had no trouble answering the questions, thus rendering the lesson defunct. In actual fact, my lesson began with a discussion of the artists, genres and instruments they like/know - so those you mentioned, and many others, had already been noted...
I felt that using video or household names would distract them from the task at hand.
In hindsight, my students have been very receptive. Most loved the example of Gypsy, some were crazy for electronic, and others hated the ballad. As with all people from all cultures their opinions were mixed, but importantly they absolutely did have both positive and negative opinions (in English) regardless of whether they've heard of these artists. I've been very pleased and surprised with how they've digested music that's so different to what they're used to hearing, and have received compliments from my co-teachers on the originality and freshness of the material. I even discovered that one of my cos likes post-rock
Basically, I didn't want to dilute the exercise by pandering to popular culture or by trying to impress them with music I know they'll like. The main aim was to get them describing music, thinking about the instruments used and forming and expressing an opinion. To do that, it was necessary for me to use vastly differing artists.
