Are there people who don’t like Beyoncé?

By Alex Abad-Santos Updated May 12, 2015, 6:47pm EDT

Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at the Atlantic.

Part of Beyoncé’s rise to fame, explained

Yes.

Some people just don’t enjoy the hype. Constantly being told that a certain person is always amazing and is never wrong can get old very quickly.

There are others who don’t really like Beyoncé’s music because they think she’s a constructed machine and isn’t really “real.” Beyoncé, since an early age, has been groomed to be a pop star, and critics wonder if she’s ever even gotten to actually experience the things she’s singing about or if she’s just singing songs prepared for her.

”It’s not like Beyoncé can’t sing,” Mary J. Blige told WWD in 2005. “Those girls [Bey and Ciara] are groomed to be pop artists, to be perfect, to go to modeling school and learn how to walk and talk. Whereas we had to go through the trenches and get beat up and knocked down by life to learn how to articulate ourselves properly. And there’s no school for that. There’s no school for organic.”

The other major critique of Beyoncé is that she contradicts herself. The argument goes like this: Beyoncé sings songs about being independent and being her own best friend, yet she also sings songs like ”Cater 2 U,” about being completely subservient to a man, or songs like “Drunk in Love,” which features an allusion to Ike and Tina Turner’s abusive relationship.

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