Not being able to write songs by themselves or play an instrument has never been an obstacle to commercial success for artists like Beyonce and Kanye West. But it is only in recent years that such artists have won over critics and, for want of a better phrase, music snobs.

Despite requiring 60 songwriters-for-hire, Beyonce’s Lemonade is the best reviewed album of the year, according to Metacritic. The internet is awash with critics and fans dissecting the meanings behind its tracks. It is being worshipped in a fashion that used to be exclusively reserved for artists like Radiohead. The releases of Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and Drake have been getting the same treatment.

Beyonce may have made her name “shaking her arse for a living,” as Noel Gallagher so eloquently put it. But you are now as likely to read an article called “Beyonce's 'Lemonade' Is an Anthem for the Retribution of Black Women” as one called “How Beyonce trimmed down from 148 pounds to 115 pounds in a couple of weeks!”

Lemonade has been revered as an intensely personal and intimate album about the infidelity of Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z. Plenty of brilliant art has been born from pain, but can it really be claimed that Lemonade comes from a real place, given that it was crafted by an army of professional songwriters? Isn’t the appeal of the album’s incessant references to Jay-Z’s cheating (which itself may just be a marketing invention) of the same variety as a sordid splash from Heat magazine? For something that has been hailed as a relatable anthem for disadvantaged black women, there sure are a lot of references to Givenchy, paparazzi and “average bitches.”

I suppose what I’m asking is this: why has it become cool to listen to music that reeks of focus groups and corporate strategy, and why have we turned our back on music imbued with authentic, rather than constructed, personality?