With the increasing diversity of voices and ways of being in music education, and growing challenges toward the foundations of the field and what it means to be a researcher, musician, and music educator in today's climate, it is pertinent to investigate how the field is adapting to these changes. One of these challenges has been the inclusion of popular music in school music and beyond as an avenue to create lifelong affinity toward and engagement with music. However, the presence of popular music as a concept, practice, project, content, and pedagogy in school music, and also beyond the boundaries of school, has brought with it a plethora of questions, apprehensions, and existential quandaries. Who benefits from popular music, and who is harmed by it? How inclusionary or exclusionary is popular music? Whose popular music matters? Does popular music dismantle the hegemonic practices in the field or is it just another way to reaffirm the dominant discourse? Attending to such questions, in this seminar we engage with the literature in the field of music education, ethnomusicology, and sound studies to grapple with these issues, and re-examine popular music's role in education and individuals' everyday living practices.