Try singing Some Kind of Wonderful sober! What a bad song. You'd have to be drunk to dig it.
I liked the idea of inventing a title for "less-than-par" prog from prog bands (BIG GENERATO
and suprisingly progressive material from more mainstream artists (first three Journey albums). However, I hate the term "Prog-Lite." It sounds very demeaning to me. The term I always use describing music to my friends that fits this category is "proggish."
Example: "Have you heard the last album Jimmy Eat World did before they got on MTV? You know, CLARITY? It's really good melodic pop-rock with a lot of good hooks and incredible vocal harmonies, good lyrics too, and the last song is actually pretty proggish if you ask me."
See? Isn't that nice?
By this definition, I'd consider "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," "The Brazillian," and "Domino" as Prog, but "The Land of Confusion" as proggish.
BTW, Vapor Trails rules.