What connections are there between the blues and pop music ?

I'd have to write a paper on it.

The short version: everything you hear in rock and most pop has the mitochondrial DNA of blues in it, unless it's an attempt like Shakira made a few years ago with that lovely tango song that crashed on the charts.

Pop is based on the blues. If you look at music of today they are still using the same structures as in the 50s.

Same structure, same melodic ideas. they both repeat riffs, and most of all, they both rely around a hook.

Blues is the foundation of popular music. Look at the songs that have been covered by popular musicians -- it isn't unusual to find that the composers are traditional blues musicians. The examples are too numerous to mention -- everyone from the Beatles to the Rollings Stones to George Thorogood to Nirvana to Live to Guns & Roses have covered old blues numbers.

None. Pop musis is crap, whereas blues is hard, real stuff.