She’s no Post Malone (KIDDING!)
Seriously though, We are music fanatics. So sometimes it’s hard to understand what the mainstream is obsessed with and why. My best approximation is to think of her Music like the Model-T Ford. She takes the best things that others originated and perfected and packages them in a way everyone can easily consume. Is as much about what here music signifies as it is about the music itself..
Taylor Swift for better or worse is in the same boat.
This seems like an oversimplification. I think there is certainly pop music that, for lack of a better term, is soft pap (I'm vaguely paraphrasing Louisa May Alcott here).
I do not think Beyonce (or Taylor Swift for that matter) fit there. I think they both tap into emotions that a swath of demographics (culture, age, etc) can appreciate. Saying that we (and I include myself) as music fanatics have some sort of keener insight into the depths of music is kind of insulting (it reminds of when podcast comics call everyone else "civilians"; like our brains are wired differently).
Perhaps you did not mean it this way - or you did, and it is certainly your prerogative - but the bolded part of your quotation makes it seem like you think she is watering down and regurgitating others work. I will not argue that - especially Act I - does not rely on past architecture but I think it works as a homage and rebirth (heck re-nascence, right) but not derivation. Just my opinion.
I wonder how much of a dive you have done into her work. And you may have and arrived at the same conclusion. Fair. But I also respectfully disagree. I'm not saying you or anyone else has to like her (there's plenty I do not listen to myself), but I think a simpler answer is it's not my style or tastes.
I also find it odd to say "I don't get the hype" (not quoting you here, but others above) about an artist who put out their first album in 1998 (first Destiny's Child album). Just as much as it would be odd for me to say I don't get the hype for, say, Pearl Jam who put out their first album seven years prior to DC. An artist with that much longevity is no longer coasting on hype - albeit I gladly accept a particular release can be argued to be hype (e.g. the branding of Act II as country surely adds hype).
But to use my first example of Pearl Jam, I'd rather listen to an artist (Beyonce) this far into her career putting out fresh albums with more artistic runway in front of her than the umpteenth boring album put out by PJ (not my tastes) in the last two decades (or, place in a multitude of other bands that are not packing the artistic punch they did years prior....looking at you RHCP).
Also, while I say this and I do enjoy her music, I am not wrapped up in fandom for her (or anyone, for that matter). In fact, right after listening to Act II again this morning I followed it with a nice chaser of doom metal a la Dream Unending (one of my albums of '22); so I'm certainly not dying on a pop music hill.
Just some of the comments here come off as....(mildly) dismissive or (more aggressively) elitist. Then again, this is the hot takes thread so I think we're all hitting it on the nose.
{small edits for clarification}
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