That song is terrible (and I love Devin Townsend, the singer).
2. Jazz is barely a genre anymore there's so many different sub-genre's and movements within it that actually using the term how you did is disingenuous.
3. You did the same as above with about the same effect for "pop music". Seeing as you addressed harmony, you'll actually find that there are lots of common harmonic (chord) progressions that are shared between the two idioms. They reflect each other more than they are different to each other. If you really wanted to make the point you were trying to make I'd suggest looking for some form of obscure ethnic music (Pakistani throat singing or Indonesian Gamelan perhaps) that has not really had much chance to mix with western music and absorb its paradigms.
I can understand styles of music sounding awful, but what does it mean for a whole genre of music to sound awful? How does that even make sense?
Just to be clear, do you think this (Desafinado) sounds awful?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So718wk426c
Crazy talk.
What I'm referring to as what sounds awful are songs that try to use "creative" chords that are really just dissonant or don't belong together and "advanced" notes that are really just out of key. As far as I can tell this song isn't doing that.
According to this website I listen to 60 tracks every day.
You are not used to listen to Jazz so it's more likely to sound horrible to you since it's often rather complex.
Why do you think that parents of the 68' generation hated Beatles despite it being what we consider pop culture today.
You need to understand this in context rather than in absolute terms.
Many people as they start playing instruments they start developing a more and more sophisticated sense of harmony.
It's not different than code looking like nonsense to the noob.
This is where culture comes in. Jazz used to be pop-music, people grew up with it.
Context history culture sophistication at any given subject.