But those 'thousands of counterexamples' do not tend to have lasting success; fleeting success is fairly clearly popularity-driven. Lasting success takes producing works that appeal to good taste. Both Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa are great examples of artists that have produced works with lasting success. I would put Lil Nas X, 2Pac, Eminem in that category too, as another example from 'not pop.' T-Pain, less so. :)
I'd like to invoke Sturgeon's law[1] here. Basically it's not useful to claim that the overwhelming majority of pop-music is "low-effort shit" because that's true of nearly all genres.
