Analogous to this DEBATE is what's happened to poetry - for centuries!, it was about telling WITHIN the framework of metre and/or rhyme, until Ezra Pound and friends decided that framework should be chopped (sound familiar?)...

Poem 148 of 230: AUDIENCE LOST

I returned, again,
    To what they pen -
The free-verse poets:
    Deep prose in sets...
I could read, again,
    Of Mice and Men.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

...and I think most of the changes to English-folk were also of the last century, with little before that; and, yes, it seems it was popular - but with a very different framework from that of American-pop!