Jane Dark Sugarhigh blog on Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" restoring "melodic range to pop"

no swearing on my copy of the album!

i think beyoncé's return, again and again, to the theme of economics is essential to both the persona she builds up of herself as popstar, and to enable her songs to ring true to 'normal' life. she's consistently used financial security/superiority to represent more than just what it is; and, far from rendering her heartless and cold, the way she constantly returns to it kind of proves that she's more in touch with the sometimes-unpleasant details of how real-life relationships (both within & without her income bracket) function than any number of singers who prefer to sing about the more romantic, rose-coloured picture. what's that statistic again, half of all relationships end because of financial disagreements/incompatibility?

she doesn't offer any comment on how unpleasantly materialistic life can get, just affirms it; and by affirming it by talking about ridiculous fucking bullshit brands, sports cars, and war diamonds yay, she really isn't on the side of the poor lex.

She then didn't add a "Why you frontin' wigga?" style html mark-up box.

Fair enough, but that doesn't really answer my question. I didn't ask how they are similiar, (and half of that is based on circumstance, rather than anything within the songs. the circle-of-fifths thing may be a good point, but my knowledge of music theory is rather rudimentary) I asked how one is a ripoff of the other. I don't see any reason to assume that Beyonce was consciously or even subconsciously setting out to make a song that sounds like "Unpretty".

I did not use the word "ripoff" to imply intent on the part of Beyonce. I used the word "ripoff" to imply similarity, chronology and how I view the relative quality of both (I am not a fan of "Unpretty" but I would rather listen to that any day over "Irreplaceable", despite Beyonce being a much better singer than anyone in TLC).