The Greatest Pop Star By Year: 1981-2023 (Updated Staff Picks)

Pop stars existed before 1981. You could credibly call either Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley the first teen idol, just like how you could call The Beatles the first boy band, assessments that carry the weight of history. Nevertheless, none of these 20th Century icons feels like a modern pop star the way that Blondie — or perhaps more specifically, frontwoman Debbie Harry — still does. 

Blame this modernity on how Blondie was a product of the downtown art-punk scene of New York City. Co-led by Harry and her creative (and romantic) partner/guitarist Chris Stein, the sextet — which in the early ’80s also featured drummer Clem Burke, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, bassist Nigel Harrison and guitarist Frank Infante — loved the ephemeral nature and essential trash of pop music, but they existed at somewhat of a remove, offering commentary on stardom as much as they were delving into the thrum of pop. 

Read our full Blondie essay here, written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine — along with our ’81 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

The 1980s was the last decade that rock still dominated top 40, and 1982 was a high-water mark. It was the year that J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold,” the poppy hit for the Peter Wolf-led bluesy rock band; Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” the still-parodied theme to Rocky III; Steve Miller’s career-revitalizing “Abracadabra”; and Joan Jett’s barroom anthem “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” all hit No. 1 on the Hot 100. It was also the year that marked the breakthrough of a rock singer-songwriter from the heartland, who had struggled mightily since the mid-1970s to define himself musically.

That all changed with the release of American Fool in April 1982. The album’s first single, “Hurts So Good,” was a prime cut of Midwest barroom rock, with handclaps and air-guitar-worthy licks that rose to No. 2 on the Hot 100 in August. The song’s lyrics didn’t say a whole lot, but the music video did, in its own lo-fi way: With his swinging mop of hair, F-you squint and fringed chaps, John Cougar Mellencamp emerged as a gap-toothed Midwest heartthrob doing the good ‘ol boy two-step, with a bunch of chopper-riding townies and truck-stop dancers who were definitely not out of Central Casting. From that point on, Mellencamp would position himself as a man of the people — specifically, the people who lived along the rural routes and in the declining towns of middle America.  

Read our full John Cougar Mellencamp essay here, written by Frank DiGiacomo — along with our ’82 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Simply put: There’s pop stardom, and then there’s 1983 Michael Jackson. The King of Pop’s greatest year is the yardstick against which all other years of musical mainstream supremacy will forever be measured, unprecedented in its LP sales, hit singles, iconic music videos and generally incalculable cultural impact. No solo pop star since Elvis Presley had been so ubiquitous before, and none — with one possible exception in 2023 — has been since. 

All the stats and superlatives about MJ’s music and videos in 1983 — greatest, biggest, longest — barely scratch the surface of just how inextricable he was to American life in 1983. In one TV appearance alone, on the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever special that May, Jackson’s performance of “Billie Jean” rocked the worlds of fashion and dance, thanks to his soon-to-be-signature white glove and jaw-dropping moonwalk maneuver. His multi-million-dollar promotional deal with Pepsi, signed that December, set the bar for celebrity endorsements. And by becoming too big for anyone to ignore, Jackson broke down color lines all across the industry — particularly at MTV, which previously focused solely on rock-based videos from white artists. 

Read our full Michael Jackson essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our ’83 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Who is this kid?  

That was the refrain echoed by music fans and industry executives alike when Prince Rogers Nelson unceremoniously strolled onto the scene in April 1978 with debut studio album For You. At that point, he was a 19-year-old unknown, already with the brashness to credit himself as having produced, arranged, composed and performed all of his album’s tracks.

Six years and six albums later, Prince laid to rest any further questions, letting the entire country know exactly who he was with the essential (and quintessential) Purple Rain. The June ’84 release dynamically showcased the Purple One’s formidable skill set as an innovative and fearless songwriter, producer, musician and singer. And this time around, Prince added a twist — bringing to the forefront the creative acumen of his tight-knit rock band The Revolution, comprised of Wendy Melvoin (guitar/vocals), Lisa Coleman (keyboards/piano, vocals), Matt “Doctor” Fink (keyboards, vocals), Brown Mark (bass guitar, vocals) and Bobby Z (drums).

Read our full Prince essay here, written by Gail Mitchell — along with our ’84 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

By the end of 1984, Madonna had already established herself as one of the MTV era’s brightest stars, with boundary-pushing videos, underground-nodding dance-pop hits, and a writhing Video Music Awards performance that turned the then-fledgling telecast into a must-watch event. But the year after Like A Virgin’s release was owned by Madonna from back to front — the last four weeks of the title track’s run at No. 1 on the Hot 100 opened 1985, and she followed it up with smash singles like “Material Girl” and “Angel,” her feature-film debut and first silver-screen starring role, and yet more unavoidable music videos.

“Like a Virgin” hit No. 1 in December 1984 and stayed there until the end of January — just as her Marilyn Monroe-saluting, Keith Carradine-starring video for “Material Girl” was being added to MTV’s rotation. The bouncy, sardonic track would go on to reach No. 2 and become one of Madonna’s career-defining songs, its video establishing Madonna’s blonde-ambition ideal while also showing off her more down-to-earth side. It also helped Like A Virgin reach the top of the Billboard 200 for three weeks in February.

Read our full Madonna essay here, written by Maura Johnston — along with our ’85 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Phil Collins was everywhere back in 1985. Switch on the radio and you were bound to hear a song that featured him in some fashion. Perhaps it was one of the four top 10 hits from his third solo album, No Jacket Required: “Sussudio” and “One More Night” both topped the Billboard Hot 100, while “Don’t Lose My Number” and “Take Me Home” came close. Maybe it was as a duet partner with Philip Bailey or Marilyn Martin: both “Easy Lover” and “Separate Lives” permeated the airwaves and the public consciousness. 

His very omnipresence turned him into a superstar, even if at first glance it would seem that he would’ve been the furthest thing from a pop icon. Chalk some of this up to his everyday appearance and his studied lack of flair: Back in 1985, the joke was Phil Collins didn’t seem like a pop star, he looked like an accountant. It was a jab that cut in multiple directions, insulting Collins’s looks, consigning him to anonymity and dismissing his music as being nothing more than crass, calculated commercialism.

Read our full Phil Collins sidebar here, written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

Overnight sensation. Pop’s new queen. The voice. Those are just a few of the headline-blaring accolades bestowed upon a 22-year-old Whitney Houston in 1986.

With her stunning, church-honed five-octave range, pretty girl-next-door persona and musical pedigree (backing vocalist mom Cissy Houston; cousin and pop/R&B pioneer Dionne Warwick), Houston found herself sharing radio space with a formidable contingent of female voices in 1986. The year’s tally of established and emerging talent included Madonna, Heart, Cyndi Lauper, Janet Jackson and Sade. While Warwick claimed top song for “That’s What Friends Are For,” Houston did unseat Madonna for honors as Billboard’s No. 1 pop artist of the year.

Whitney further broke down the color barrier at MTV with the fun, vibrant video for her energetic and catchy ode to love, “How Will I Know” (backing vocals courtesy of Cissy), which became the second No. 1 off her self-titled debut in February of 1986. With her final single off the album, Houston ascended the Hot 100 throne once again with the soaring anthem “Greatest Love of All,” originally recorded by George Benson a decade earlier — which became her third consecutive chart-topper that May, and a future pop perennial. 

Read our full Whitney Houston essay here, written by Gail Mitchell — along with our ’86 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Hair metal, glam rock, pop metal — whatever you want to call it, the big hooks and big hair that dominated hard rock in the Reagan years reached its apex in 1987. Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard released career-defining albums, Aerosmith staged a major comeback, and Motley Crue went multi-platinum. But nobody ruled the charts like Bon Jovi, whose 1986 album Slippery When Wet spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and topped the year-end chart for 1987, while the single “Livin’ on a Prayer” was the year’s longest-reigning Hot 100 chart-topper.

Unlike other hair metal heroes who moved to L.A. to make it on the Sunset Strip, Jon Bon Jovi kickstarted his career on his home turf, like his Jersey idol Bruce Springsteen. Recording his first hit, 1984’s “Runaway” — with a lineup of session musicians that included E Street Band keyboardist Roy Bittan and eventual longtime JBJ sideman guitarist Richie Sambora — Bon Jovi got the song on local radio, signed a record deal, and formed his eponymous band. But their momentum stalled when their second album failed to yield another hit as big as “Runaway.” Bon Jovi’s third album became their make-or-break moment, much as Born to Run had been for Springsteen.

Read our full Bon Jovi essay here, written by Al Shipley — along with our ’87 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

MTV was no longer a novelty in 1988: It was the engine driving the music industry, shaping the Billboard charts and molding the very image of a pop star. George Michael realized the depth of this change more than his peers. Music videos were crucial to his rise to stardom in the mid-’80s as part of the hitmaking duo Wham!, but those singles deliberately targeted teenyboppers, underscoring the idea that MTV was for kids. Michael abandoned such notions when he went solo in 1987 — deciding to refashion his persona so it was sexy, mature, even dangerous.

Of course, this was a strategic pose, as all pop music is to an extent. Michael embraced how image and music are inseparable, consciously crafting Faith — his ‘87 solo debut LP, which ruled the charts throughout 1988 thanks to four No. 1 singles — so the videos enhanced the music, and vice versa. All through 1988, it was impossible to escape images of George Michael bopping to a rockabilly guitar in his tight jeans, brooding with a broken heart or seducing comely models in “Father Figure.” These looks were tailored for the times, while reflecting the times: They were stylish, moneyed fantasias, where the sex was as intoxicating as the wealth. It never seemed that Michael was one with the audience — he stood separate, an object of admiration and desire, a pop star who never made a wrong move.

Read our full George Michael essay here, written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine — along with our ’88 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

With guitars starting to give ground and hip-hop not yet fully crossed over to a wider audience, the 1980s were the biggest decade for dance-based pop in the American mainstream. And as it came to a close, the era’s biggest female pop star — and arguably the biggest female pop star of all time — reached a new apex in terms of artistry and impact.

While Madonna would go on to notch bigger hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and reach more idiosyncratic artistic heights, Like a Prayer was the last proper studio album where she would enjoy such universal adoration. As the ’90s set in, her detractors would get louder, but in 1989, Madonna was able to own the charts, charm the critics and –- even though she released a video so controversial Pepsi decided to scrap something they paid $5 million for — reign as the most celebrated female artist in pop.

Read our full Madonna essay here, written by Joe Lynch — along with our ’89 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Birthday party at a roller rink? Yes. High school dance in a gymnasium? Yes. Suburban car ride with your mother to the dentist? Yes. All over MTV, inspiring you to try out militaristic fashions? For better or worse, also yes. Everywhere you looked, or listened, in 1990, Janet Jackson was there, soundtracking every moment in your life — from the magnificent to the mundane — with the socially conscious, message-laden smashes from her pop and R&B powerhouse of a fourth album, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814.

It arrived in September 1989, more than three years after she blew open the doors of modern R&B with the funky, in-your-face statement piece (and call for her own independence) that was Control, her first collaboration with her now-career-spanning producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. But while Control found Jackson self-reflective, she turned the mirror around on Rhythm Nation to show images of poverty, racism and substance abuse. The messages shared threads with those coming out of hip-hop at the time from Public Enemy, Salt-N-Pepa and N.W.A, but unlike those contemporaries, Jackson’s music came in a pop and R&B package whose call-to-action was twofold: pay attention, but also dance.

Read our full Janet Jackson essay here, written by Joe Lynch — along with our ’89 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Dig if you will a time when Mariah’s star power was far from assured, when practically a year’s worth of coverage from the Times pondered and doubted. Could she skirt sophomore slump and match the staggering success of her self-titled debut, which had earned her a best new artist Grammy that February that pushed the album — by then eight months old — to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, where it luxuriated for 11 straight weeks? What was the label doing differently this time around? Was Tommy Mottola, then the president of Sony Music and her rumored boyfriend, too reckless and hung up on clout? 

The dramatic irony is delicious. Bucking record biz wisdom by releasing her second album less than 18 months after her debut, Emotions put Carey in the record books and asserted her desire for creative control. (Carey is credited as a co-producer and co-writer on every song.) Though it sold less than her self-titled, Emotions made Carey the first and only act to have their first five singles reach No. 1 on the Hot 100, when the C+C Music Factory-assisted “Emotions” — her first major foray into club music, a space where she excelled in the ‘90s — topped the chart on October 12. 

Read our full Mariah Carey essay here, written by Ross Scarano — along with our ’91 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Plenty of other country stars scored big pop crossover hits prior to Garth Brooks, but the phrase “crossover” itself illustrates what Brooks did differently. Prior to Garth, country singers became stars by adapting their style so it suited pop fashions; think of how Dolly Parton embraced pop and soft rock so she could reach the top of the charts with “Here You Come Again” and “9 to 5.” Garth didn’t make any concessions to the fashions of time: Even at the height of his stardom, he didn’t crack the Hot 100’s top 40. Instead, Brooks made sure the pop rulebook, dictated by blockbuster sales and spectacular live shows, was rewritten to accommodate country music. 

At the time, the conversation surrounding Garth Brooks focused on how he incorporated arena rock into his country music, an assessment that is by no means inaccurate. “The Thunder Rolls” carries a pumped-up sense of melodrama that’s straight out of AOR, a sound that undoubtedly assisted the song’s rise to the top of the country charts in the middle of 1991. “Rolls” was the last hit pulled from No Fences, the 1990 album that turned Brooks into a superstar, and it provided the ideal transition between that album and Ropin’ The Wind, the September 1991 record that cemented Brooks’s stardom.

Read our full Garth Brooks sidebar here, written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

The baby chasing that dollar in the swimming pool. The punk rock cheerleaders hyping up a crowd of head-banging, thrashing teens. That angelic head of blonde hair and those piercing blue eyes matched with a voice that could shred a phone book with one primal scream. In 1991, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were pop: Not the pop you were used to, with neat hooks, programmed beats and dance moves, but rather jagged, jumbled pop that exploded on the radio and MTV seemingly overnight, re-ordering the universe in its own image.

Bryan Adams, Paula Abdul, Color Me Badd and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch topped the Billboard Hot 100 during the summer of 1991, just before Nirvana’s breakthrough hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” began its rise into the top 10. In the post-hair metal, mid-gangsta rap era when the charts were as confused as Generation X, a raggedy trio of saviors roared in from Seattle dressed in flannel, ripped jeans, a hairshirt of angst and the noisiest pop tunes to ever conquer the mainstream.

Read our full Nirvana essay here, written by Gil Kaufman — along with our ’92 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Since her 1986 breakthrough, Janet Jackson had been on a historic run. Having spent seven years on a remarkable pop tear that saw her become one of the biggest stars in music, by 1993, Janet was heading in a new direction. Her previous album, the titanic Rhythm Nation 1814, featured topical subject matter and thematic videos, and saw Janet’s image draped in semi-androgynous fashion sensibilities. But she’d hinted at what her next phase would be with the Herb Ritts-directed music video for 1990’s “Love Will Never Do (Without You),” which famously dropped the squared jackets and baseball caps of Nation’s earlier videos — instead showcasing a svelte and sexy Janet in the desert.

That image shift would inform her 1993-94 janet. album and campaign. Also, she’d taken a more direct hand in the songwriting process this time around. Her blockbuster contract with Virgin in 1991 led to chatter that she was coasting on her hitmaking producers and famous last name, but it goaded her into taking an active role in the writing and production on janet. And the singular album title was also intended to reflect her singular focus and a dismissal of any associations as the source of her success. This album is presented as “janet — PERIOD.”

Read our full Janet Jackson essay here, written by Stereo Williams — along with our ’93 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

When Boyz II Men made its debut in 1991 with Cooleyhighharmony, you’d typically find the quartet of high school buddies (Wanya Morris, Shawn Stockman, Nathan Morris and Michael McCary) in coordinated cardigans, bow ties and baseball caps, looking like they’d just stepped off campus. But a new grown-up group hit the scene in 1994, with their aptly titled sophomore album II. 

The air-tight harmonies were still there, but the music had migrated to adult R&B — made obvious by the straight-to-the-point lead single “I’ll Make Love to You” — and the matching outfits were now silk pajamas topped with gold chains, a daily sight on MTV, where the clips for “Make Love” and other II singles were a constant presence. Even with their grown-and-sexy makeover, you could still take these guys home to mom, making their previously wide appeal even wider. (As noted in Entertainment Weekly‘s review of the album at the time, “When they do get down and dirty, it’s with someone they want to spend their life with.”)

Read our full Boyz II Men essay here, written by Katie Atkinson — along with our ’94 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Some pop acts from the last four decades only captured the public’s imagination for a single year before shedding the spotlight — either by their choice or ours. Here are the ten greatest examples. 

10. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (2013)

The Year to Remember: Longtime dorm-rap favorites out of Seattle, the rapper/producer duo went nationwide in 2013 with a pair of Hot 100 No. 1s off breakthrough album The Heist — bargain-bin anthem “Thrift Shop” and chest-beater “Can’t Hold Us” — becoming the year’s most unavoidable crossover hip-hop act. 

What Happened Next: A bubbling backlash foamed over early the next year, as the duo’s overexposure hit a peak with four wins at the 2014 Grammys — and by their next LP in 2016, rap had largely moved into the streaming era without them. 

9. C&C Music Factory (1991)

The Year to Remember: The dance-pop conglomerate — headed by producers (and titular “C”s) Robert Clivillés & David Cole — exploded onto the charts with jock jam extraordinaire “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” a No. 1 hit in early 1991 that was followed to the top five by floor-filling follow-ups “Here We Go” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” 

What Happened Next: Clivilés & Cole produced other hits for Mariah Carey and Aretha Franklin, but had muted chart success of their own before Cole’s tragic death in 1995. 

Read our full Greatest Pop Stars One-Year Wonders list here.

Amidst the grunge and G-Funk that defined the decade, the ‘90s also bore witness to perhaps the greatest crop of girl groups found in R&B since mid-’60s Motown: En Vogue, SWV, Xscape, Jade and several other hitmakers. But by 1995, one of those groups had separated from the pack to become the defining pop ensemble of their era: Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas, collectively known as TLC. 

CrazySexyCool, the group’s sophomore album released in November ‘94, was a game-changer. Dialing back on the frenetic bangers and eye-popping fashion statements of their multi-platinum ‘92 breakthrough Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip, the supremely funky CrazySexyCool saw the trio maturing without dulling — first with “Creep,” a cheater’s revenge anthem with a silky beat and a subtle hip-hop production edge. Released as the album’s lead single that October, the song boasted a lyrical and musical sophistication unmatched in pop at the time, and became the group’s first Hot 100-topper in January of ‘95. 

Read our full TLC essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our ’95 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

When grunge was exploding in the United States in the early 1990s, Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette was making dance-pop in the vein of Debbie Gibson. But the saccharine sounds of her first two albums, 1991’s Alanis and 1992’s Now Is the Time, were not at all indicative of what was to come: an emotional-exorcism of a third album that positioned her as the pissed-off queen of alternative rock.

That album, Jagged Little Pill, was co-written by Morissette, then 19, and producer Glen Ballard. Up until then, Ballard was best known for his work with Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul and Wilson Phillips, yet somehow, when he and Morissette combined forces, they brought out the rock in one another. Pill came out in June 1995 on Madonna’s Maverick label, with singles “You Oughta Know” and “Hand in My Pocket” dropping in July and October, respectively. The album hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in October, but soon slipped thanks to the arrival of Mariah Carey’s Daydream.

But Jagged wasn’t down for the count. At the 1996 Grammys, Morissette was nominated for six awards and walked away with four of them: album of the year, best rock album, best female rock vocal performance and best rock song. In addition to the Grammys, the album got another hefty push back into the limelight early in the year thanks to the quirky, colorful video and subsequent single release of the song “Ironic.” The pop-rock singalong famously confused generations of English students to come by misidentifying a series of bad-luck incidents as ironic (“It’s like rain on your wedding day/ It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid”), asking of each, “Isn’t it ironic?” (Actually, no.)

Read our full Alanis Morissette essay here, written by Christine Werthman — along with our ’96 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

(This entry was originally published in 2018, before the disturbing allegations about Puff Daddy’s history of assault and abuse — which he has denied, maintaining his innocence — were made public. We have updated the entry to account for those allegations.)

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The year was supposed to be Big’s; he was the star the Bad Boy universe revolved around, and the plan was clear: “Ten years from now we’ll still be on top.” But come the morning of March 9, 1997, label founder Sean Combs and company were left devastated. With the rapper born Christopher Wallace dead at the age of 24, the victim of a still-unsolved shooting, the “we” intended to dominate for a decade was broken, that lyric a prophecy that could never be fulfilled. 

Like everything else, the grieving commingled with the business. Combs needed to finish Life After Death, slated to hit stores on March 25, and that meant final touches, including an intro track that would honor his friend’s life and work. Meanwhile, “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” — Puff’s single with a 19-year-old who grew up in Harlem, and whom he was grooming for stardom, had been steadily climbing the charts since its February release. On March 11, Mase and Puffy’s swaggering flip of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” and Matthew Wilder’s mid-’80s hit “Break My Stride” hit No. 1 on the Hot 100, where it reigned for six weeks, cementing itself as a classic of what would eventually be known as the Shiny Suit Era.

That was the view from the sidelines that year. What the world is only learning now is that throughout the 1990s and into the 2020s, Combs was allegedly committing acts of sexual violence against a variety of individuals, including recording artists, members of the music industry, and young fans of Bad Boy. In 1998, the year after his ascension to stardom, he is alleged to have groped a teenager at one of his much written about white parties. In September of this year, he was indicted on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. (Combs has denied these allegations and maintained his innocence — though after video leaked of him assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in 2016, he apologized for his behavior, before later deleting the apology.) It would be inaccurate to consider the 1990s and ignore his achievements — the continued expansion of hip-hop into the highest levels of pop success in the 21st century has its roots in Combs’ 1997 — just as it is impossible to consider him now outside this avalanche of lawsuits and allegations. 

Read our full Puff Daddy essay here, written by Ross Scarano — along with our ’97 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

The pop zeitgeist of 1997 can best be summed up by two people — not musicians, but video directors. At the height of MTV’s power to turn singles into chart hits, Hype Williams and Joseph “McG” McGinty Nichol completely overhauled the channel’s visual aesthetic.

Williams turned his famous fisheye lens towards bright colors and fantastical sets and costumes in 1997: Puff Daddy and Ma$e danced and flew in shiny red jumpsuits, Missy Elliott twitched around in an inflated garbage bag, and Busta Rhymes wore glow-in-the-dark tribal paint. Meanwhile, McG’s blindingly bright and unapologetically silly videos for Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth turned the little-known alt-rock bands into platinum pop stars virtually overnight.

Read our full 1997 sidebar essay here, written by Al Shipley.

On Sept. 14, 1998, the first episode of a music video countdown show titled Total Request Live aired on MTV. With a 25-year-old Carson Daly serving as host, TRL — a hybrid of the channel’s pre-filmed video countdown program Total Request and their daily variety show MTV Live — used fan votes to reflect the popular music of the moment, and would quickly morph into a mid-afternoon cable phenomenon defined by the young fans within and outside of the show’s Times Square studio, screaming about seeing their favorite artist’s video hit No. 1. Often, they held up signs with neon-colored magic marker, squiggly hearts surrounding their words. A lot of those signs simply read “BSB.”

During a more primitive era of the Internet, before fan armies and stan wars, there was the Backstreet Boys eliciting shrieks on TRL, the most accomplished members of a teenybopper tidal wave that was going to crash down upon American pop at the dawn of a new millennium. Before Britney Spears was the princess of pop, before *NSYNC was hitting its own commercial stride — and before Eminem was taking explicit potshots at all of them — AJ McLean, Howie Dorough, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell had achieved a level of commercial dominance and teen worship that would set the tempo for a prolonged cultural movement. 

Read our full Backstreet Boys essay here, written by Jason Lipshutz — along with our ’98 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Britney Spears‘ debut single “…Baby One More Time” hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 the week of Jan. 30, 1999, kicking off a year that radically transformed modern pop. “Baby” spent a mere two weeks on top, and Spears didn’t come close to replicating its chart success within that year: “Sometimes,” her second single, topped out at No. 21, while “(You Drive Me) Crazy” wound up peaking at No. 10. While certainly respectable, these chart positions in no way reflect how thoroughly Britney Spears dominated the pop culture of 1999.

In a way, Britney Spears’s rise is analogous to the other pop phenomenons of the 1990s, trends that were incubated in the underground only to explode in the mainstream. Noisy, dangerous and defiant, alternative rock and hip-hop’s ascendency dominated the decade, obscuring how a commercial counter-culture developed in their shadow. Where grunge and rap were to some extent grassroots movements, the teen-pop revolution was cannily constructed by the industry. Anchored on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, this unabashedly pop movement picked up where New Kids On The Block and New Edition left off, updating bubblegum with new jack rhythms and corporate pizzazz. Spears cut her teeth here as part of the ’90s incarnation of The Mickey Mouse Club, a place where she learned how to sing, dance and be a star. 

Read our full Britney Spears essay here, written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine — along with our ’99 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Someday in the not-too-distant future, when every song ever recorded will be implanted inside our cerebral cortex, your grandkids will go through your attic and ask why anyone wasted their time listening to music on those plastic circles. But for now, let’s look back at the year 2000, when the boys of *NSYNC sold A LOT of those weird little discs. Like, more than anyone ever had in a single week. During a year when everyone from ATLiens OutKast to one-hit wonders Baha Men to MTV icons Britney Spears and Eminem were moving literal truckloads of CDs before the Great Physical Music Meltdown, Justin Timberlake, Joey Fatone, Lance Bass, JC Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick were the boy band kings of retail island.

The group’s second studio album, No Strings Attached, dropped on March 21, 2000, like a tightly choreographed atom bomb. Not only did it easily debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (where it stayed for eight weeks), but it also obliterated all previous first-frame sales records, with an astonishing 2.4 million copies moved — a high-water mark that stood until Adele surpassed it in 2015 with 25.

Read our full *NSYNC essay here, written by Gil Kaufman — along with our ’00 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

A pretty good accomplishment to topline any single-year resumé: In February of 2001, Jennifer Lopez had both the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 (sophomore LP J. Lo) and the No. 1 film at the U.S. box office (romantic comedy The Wedding Planner) — making her the first entertainer to ever hold both top spots simultaneously. It was illustrative of Lopez’s decade-long evolution from a primetime TV backup dancer to one of the biggest stars — musical or otherwise — in the entire world. 

By 2001, a headline-grabbing (and Google Image Search-jumpstarting) appearance in a revealing dress at the Grammys the year before had also established Lopez as perhaps the ultimate sex symbol of the new millennium. That image continued in the video for J.Lo lead single “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” released at the end of 2000, in which Lopez sheds an unsatisfying relationship, along with most of her clothes, on the way to a liberating swim in the ocean. “Love” was climbing the Hot 100 as the calendar turned to 2001, peaking at No. 3 that February.

Read our full Jennifer Lopez essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our ’01 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

In 2002, 9/11 was fresh on everyone’s minds, while U.S. headlines were dominated by the misinformation-filled campaign to sell America on the Iraq War (which would be authorized later that year). So while Eminem may seem like an unlikely pop hero, when you take into account the whiplash and confusion that characterized that year, perhaps only someone this angry could truly define 2002.

At this point, Eminem was perfectly poised to come across both as an authority and a provocateur – with two smash albums under his belt, he was a proven force in the industry and an instantly recognizable face nationwide. But just shy of 30 and only in the public eye for three years by 2002, he could still convincingly play the role of s–t-stirring outsider, tackling the personal and the political with equal dexterity.

Read our full Eminem essay here, written by Joe Lynch — along with our ’02 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

“You ready?” Beyoncé Knowles asks to kick off the lead single from her first solo offering, Dangerously in Love. What fools we were to shrug it off as a throwaway line, when it really was a declaration of independence, the opening statement in the most successful solo transition since Michael Jackson a quarter-century earlier.

By 2003, we knew Beyoncé as one-fourth — and then one-third — of Destiny’s Child, but hints at a solo run were clear from the start. To her credit, she played her cards carefully, acutely aware that members of other star ‘90s R&B groups underperformed commercially after striking out on their own. Her moves started with a subtle push of DC’s sonic boundaries with each successive LP, expanding her role as a writer and producer, while shepherding the group from girls-next-door R&B to the force behind generational anthems like “Independent Women Part I,” and “Survivor.” Bey then strengthened her crossover appeal in 2002, starring on the small screen (BET’s Carmen: A Hip-Hopera) and big screen (Austin Powers in Goldmember), and pushing her musical development as a guest on then-boyfriend Jay-Z’s “’03 Bonnie and Clyde” — a move that upgraded her urban clout in a demographic that had yet to fully embrace her. And then she was ready.

Read our full Beyoncé essay here, written by Trevor Anderson — along with our ’03 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

After dancehall emerged as reggae’s rowdier, raunchier kin in the late ‘70s, the genre experienced intermittent cycles of popularity within the U.S. mainstream. The first occurred in the early ‘90s, as Shabba Ranks, Beenie Man and Buju Banton escaped the confines of local genre spaces and launched into the American market. Once the new millennium drew closer, the next wave was ready to crash the top 40. While a pair of chart-topping hits from ‘90s Jamaican hitmaker Shaggy — 2000’s “It Wasn’t Me” and the next year’s “Angel” — leaned more pop, they helped open the gates for dancehall to once again cross over.

The year 2003 introduced a new crew of dancehall artists whose music was tailored for American radio — yet they didn’t water down their homegrown flair to do so. Elephant Man had clubs from Toronto to New York City signaling di plane with “Pon de River, Pon de Bank.” Wayne Wonder found the perfect crossover formula with the swoon-worthy “No Letting Go,” which peaked just outside the Hot 100’s top 10. Lumidee’s debut single “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh),” founded on the same Diwali riddim as Wonder’s hit, rode the summery production to No. 3 on the Hot 100.  

Read our full dancehall 2003 sidebar here, written by Bianca Gracie.

The label was unsatisfied. The Nov. 6, 2003 release date for Usher’s fourth album, Confessions, was fast approaching, and though the Atlanta R&B star — a mononymous icon since his pop breakthrough six years earlier — had turned in 40-plus tracks, featuring A1 production from the Neptunes, Jermaine Dupri, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, L.A. Reid only heard the lack. Or, as Lil Jon put it, “He needed a single. They had ‘Burn,’ ‘Burn’ was hot, but they needed that first powerful monster.” The head of Arista Records pushed the album back while Lil Jon went into his bag, hunting.

The song they came up with was a monster, indeed. “Yeah!” hit the streets on Jan. 24, 2004, and by Feb. 28, it took the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100, setting up shop like it had signed a lease. If you hadn’t been hearing Atlanta before, you were now: The shoulder-shaking crunk & B banger “Yeah!” dominated for 12 weeks, until “Burn,” Usher’s remorseful second single, replaced it. For 19 consecutive weeks, the most popular songs in American came from one person, and they called him U-S-H-E-R-R-A-Y-M-O-N-D.

Read our full Usher essay here, written by Ross Scarano — along with our ’04 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

In 2003, when his debut single “Through the Wire” became a surprise hit and Kanye West was thrust into the spotlight, the brash Chicago rapper/producer was hailed as hip-hop’s greatest underdog. Two years later, Kanye was one of rap’s elite; his debut album The College Dropout placed him squarely at the top of early 2000s hip-hop, and now he was one of the biggest artists in music.

Teaming up with everyone from Jon Brion to Paul Wall for the follow-up, Kanye’s ambitions were in plain sight, and the public was eager to hear what he’d do next. It was still early in his career, but it’s obvious in hindsight that we were in the midst of the rapper/producer’s most potent creative and commercial run. West was musically and thematically referencing a cross-section of trendy, era-defining creative signifiers, like Michel Gondry and Ray — tying it all together in a winning pop formula that was undeniably infectious, but that also felt increasingly forward-pushing.

Read our full Kanye West essay here, written by Stereo Williams — along with our ’05 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

In 2006, the MTV Video Music Awards were essentially unredeemable. The weakest crop of winners in the show’s history to date — Avenged Sevenfold, James Blunt, “My Humps” — matched with a mostly inessential group of performances, hosted by a post-prime Jack Black. Al Gore was prominently involved. The ratings were low, the reviews were scathing, the show got reinvented the following year. But even at this nadir, one indelible moment emerged: Justin Timberlake and Timbaland, unlikely allies in mismatched suits, brushing each others’ shoulders off at center stage — the very image of mid-’00s pop cool. 

It wasn’t guaranteed that it would be this way. Justin Timberlake’s 2002 solo debut Justified was an enormous success, but one whose promo cycle ended with a Super Bowl performance of epochal disaster — after which Timberlake took a few years off to pick up acting, with mixed results. It had been similarly long outside the limelight for his new choice of creative soulmate: Timbaland, the writer/producer who’d spent the late ‘90s and early ‘00s inventing the future of hip-hop and R&B from within its mainstream, had fallen on hard times creatively and commercially. For the two to return with an album called FutureSex/LoveSounds felt perhaps ambitious beyond their current grasp. 

Read our full Justin Timberlake essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our ’06 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Derek Jeter, Drew Brees and Dwyane Wade can all tell you: Just because you never won MVP for a single season doesn’t mean you weren’t an all-timer. Here are the 10 greatest pop stars who we didn’t award a year to in this project. 

10. New Kids on the Block

Resumé: The biggest boy band — or pop group of any kind — at the turn of the ‘90s, using the formula manager Maurice Starr established with New Edition to even greater success, thanks to gigantic hooks, fun and imitable dance moves, and a crossover-friendlier (read: whiter) image. 

Why Never MVP? The George H.W. Bush era was simply a massive one for iconic solo stars — George, Madonna, Janet — all of whom had broader all-ages appeal than NKOTB’s teen-courting megapop. 

9. P!nk 

Resumé: A major star since her debut at the dawn of the 20th century, spending time as a rapper, a diva, a rocker, a pop star, an anti-pop star, and an adult contemporary fixture — with the only consistent factor being her chart success, scoring 15 top 10 hits, including three No. 1s.  

Why Never MVP? Perhaps because of her unfailing production and constant presence, P!nk has never quite seemed like the defining artist of any one specific period this century. 

Read our full top 10 list sidebar here.

The steamy opening shot of the “Umbrella” video is a fitting analogy for the way Rihanna truly arrived in 2007. As smoke wafts around a latex-leotard-clad mystery woman in the visual, the camera pans across her silhouette, before revealing a single smoky eye hiding under a crisp black fedora — and that eye unmistakably belongs to the Barbados-born singer. With the ubiquitous song and its striking video, Rihanna debuted a brand-new look (complete with her then-signature asymmetrical bob haircut) and a brand-new sound (not a steel drum within earshot) — as well as a brand-new masterplan to dominate the Billboard charts and become an A-list pop superstar.

Of course, Rihanna didn’t come out of nowhere — we met her in 2005 through her sun-kissed debut single “Pon De Replay,” and then she took her island roots all the way to No. 1 on the Hot 100 the next year with the Soft Cell-sampling “S.O.S.” — but it was all leading to something much bigger, and that something bigger was her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad, released in May 2007. Def Jam pulled out all the stops for the project, securing Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Tricky Stewart, The-Dream, Ne-Yo, J.R. Rotem, StarGate and more songwriting and production all-stars to put together a dozen could-be and would-be smashes.

Read our full Rihanna essay here, written by Katie Atkinson — along with our ’07 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Lil Wayne spoke it into existence. When the New Orleans rapper declared himself “the best rapper alive since the best rapper retired” on his fourth album Tha Carter in 2004, relatively few agreed that he was ready to take the crown from Jay-Z. But by the time that album’s second sequel, Tha Carter III, was released in June 2008, it wasn’t such a controversial statement. In the four years in between, he’d released a couple platinum albums, appeared on over a dozen Hot 100 hits, and released a flurry of mixtapes and freestyles to back up his claims to lyrical supremacy.

The year 2008 was a low ebb for the music industry as a whole: CD sales had cratered (particularly in hip-hop, with all but the biggest albums falling short of platinum), and with convenient legal streaming years away, iTunes sales were not making up the difference. So when Lil Wayne sold a million copies of Tha Carter III in a week — the fastest-selling album since 50 Cent’s The Massacre in 2005 — he bucked all industry trends, in part by cashing in all the goodwill he’d accrued with acclaimed free mixtapes like 2006’s Dedication 2 and 2007’s Da Drought 3. A few months later, he won best rap album at the Grammys, where Tha Carter III was also up for album of the year.

Read our full Lil Wayne essay here, written by Al Shipley — along with our ’08 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

On a frantic night in the summer of 2008, Lady Gaga struggled with her latex bodysuit as cameras for MTV’s The Hills rolled in the background. At the time, the reality soap’s leading lady, Lauren Conrad, was a bigger star than Gaga, the new kid on the major-label block. Conrad, who was working a fashion label’s launch party, zipped Gaga up following a brief, tense wardrobe malfunction. The two quickly embraced, and the singer grabbed her signature shades and a rhinestone-studded microphone before making her way to the club’s small stage.

That episode of The Hills aired in September of 2008. A year and a week after that, Gaga traded the black latex in for (fake) blood-soaked lingerie and played dead as she swung from the rafters at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Her wild-eyed performance of The Fame single “Paparazzi” at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards made for one of the ceremony’s most memorable moments — a feat for a truly historic VMAs. She was nominated for nine Moonmen that night and took home three, including best new artist for “Poker Face,” her second straight Hot 100 No. 1 that April (after debut “Just Dance” topped the chart in January). Gaga had arrived, clearly — on her own terms, and with the whole world watching.

Read our full Lady Gaga essay here, written by Hilary Hughes — along with our ’09 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

By the end of the ‘00s, hip-hop’s long held line of demarcation between rapping and crooning was blurry as ever. With their ambition and vulnerability, Kid Cudi and Drake erased it completely. 

Like many paradigm shifts in millennial culture, this revolution is impossible to separate from Kanye West. Reeling from his mother’s death, Kanye’s embrace of Auto-Tune and anguish across 2008’s 808s and Heartbreak is frequently credited for the rapper-singer sea change, though he wasn’t without his forerunners — there was Nelly, there was T-Pain, there was “Lollipop,” there were countless others. But it was an upstart Cleveland MC who shaped 808s most of all. 

Read our full Kid Cudi and Drake sidebar here, written by Chris Payne.

Simply put: Anyone who says they saw the full extent of this success story coming is a liar. Yes, by early 2011, Adele had two major Grammys (best new artist and best female pop vocal performance), while her debut album 19 flew to the top 10 of the Billboard 200 following a performance on the year’s highest-rated episode of Saturday Night Live. But ahead of round two, The Guardian summed up the situation best: “Adele is not yet a very big deal in America, because her new album, 21, isn’t out for another week. Nobody’s sure if it will make quite the same splash as her first, 19.” Everyone agreed that her voice should warrant a world-class career, but in 2011, was a great voice alone enough?

21, released that February, was an outlier from its arrival. Thumping, excitable anthems were still the queenmakers on radio and the charts, with Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Britney Spears’ “Hold It Against Me” and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” among the era’s standouts. Big-budget music videos reinforced their communal spirit, with demanding mass choreography or jubilant crowds jumping in time to a high-octane chorus. Plus, thanks to the sharpest technology, even amateur singers could pass for good vocalists, and actual singers — the Gagas and Beyoncés of the world — still integrated spectacle into their shows. In short, image and flash were paramount. Adele — no colorful costumes, no backup dancers, wait, she just stands there and sings?? — seemed pre-ordained for the adult contemporary convent. 

Read our full Adele essay here, written by Trevor Anderson — along with our ’11 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

At the turn of the decade, Rihanna was releasing music at a dizzying pace — one album per year from the November 2009 release of the dark, brooding Rated R, through the November 2012 drop of the EDM-and-reggae-flavored hit machine Unapologetic. That strategy paid off most handsomely in 2012, when she released two new Hot 100 top 10 hits, had a 2011 smash return to No. 1, collaborated with heavy hitters like Drake and Jay-Z, and took a bunch of music writers on a trip around the world.

Rihanna opened 2012 with her chart-topping collaboration with Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, the dizzying 2011 smash “We Found Love” — in which Rihanna became one of the first (and most successful) pop stars to adapt to EDM’s mainstream takeover — still lingering around the top of the Hot 100. She reasserted herself at No. 1 in late January, and “We Found Love” remained at the chart’s summit for two weeks. The title track from Rihanna’s 2011 album Talk That Talk, a spiky collaboration with her mentor Jay-Z, was released as a single later shortly after, eventually peaking at No. 31 on the Hot 100. 

Read our full Rihanna essay here, written by Maura Johnston — along with our 2012 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Miley Cyrus reinvented herself in 2013 — in large part, because she needed to.

Three years earlier, the former Disney Channel star — best known as the world-conquering kids’ character Hannah Montana — had attempted to kickstart an adult career with an album titled Can’t Be Tamed, which ditched her early pop-rock for swaggering electro-pop. Cyrus had scored hits prior to this hard pivot to a more mature sound, including 2009’s surprise smash “Party in the U.S.A.,” but Can’t Be Tamed quickly killed her momentum, thanks to a string of singles that failed to touch Top 40 radio, and a persona that felt uninspired alongside edgier new contemporaries like Lady Gaga and Kesha.

Cyrus didn’t release music for three years; in the interim, she declined touring Can’t Be Tamed in North America, left her record label, co-starred in a few mediocre films and made headlines for a TMZ video in which she was filmed with a bong. When the 20-year-old Cyrus announced the release of a new single in early 2013, her musical stardom was perceived as an uncertainty at best. Yet that single, “We Can’t Stop,” proved to be more than a resuscitation: co-produced by rap auteur Mike WiLL Made-It and originally intended for Rihanna, the song and its house-party-set music video repainted Cyrus as a twerk-happy firecracker, ready to simultaneously invigorate top 40 radio and provoke conversations about hip-hop culture appropriation.

Read our full Miley Cyrus essay here, written by Jason Lipshutz — along with our 2013 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Over the early 2010s, as a class of rising and returning stars was minted on radio, iTunes and YouTube, pop’s arms race was accelerating to unsustainable levels of hype. Each major-label release was a self-proclaimed event, each expected to be bigger than the last. Something had to give, and in 2013, the dam broke — over and over again. Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP, Katy Perry’s PRISM, Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail, Britney Spears’ Britney Jean, Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2; each promised the world, and each fell short in different, fascinating, and exhausting ways.

Amidst all the hubbub emerged a 16-year-old with humble origins and a grand name: Lorde. 

Read our full Lorde sidebar here, written by Kristen S. He.

Pity the music publications who went early on their 2013 year-end albums lists. On Dec. 13 of that year — late on a Thursday night — Beyoncé dropped her self-titled, 14-track opus on an unsuspecting Internet, who previously had only faint inklings of a new album even being near completion. The set was brilliant, a stunningly coherent and aggressively modern mélange of styles and collaborators, about which you could poll 10 separate BeyHive members on their favorite song and likely get 10 different answers — and each track came with its own music video, too. Suddenly, the year’s much-anticipated Daft Punk and Justin Timberlake albums didn’t seem quite so vital. 

What’s easy to forget now is that as head-smackingly obvious as Beyoncé made Queen Bey’s regality upon its release, her reign was not so unquestioned in the earlier part of the ‘10s. Her 2011 set 4 was well-reviewed, and spawned fan favorites in “Countdown” and “Love on Top,” but had little luck spinning off major hits; while four top 10 Hot 100 hits were pulled from prior set I Am… Sasha Fierce, nothing off 4 even made the top 15. The album ultimately posted Bey’s poorest sales to date, and while a masterful, hit-laden Super Bowl halftime set reinforced her status as one of the 21st century’s canonical pop stars, it also suggested that maybe she was moving into the next phase of her career — one primarily as a live attraction and legacy artist.

Beyoncé took until the next morning to make those suggestions seem ridiculous, and its creator spent essentially the entirety of 2014 rubbing our faces in just how wrong we’d been.

Read our full Beyoncé essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our 2014 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

While Taylor Swift had certainly dipped more than a toe into the country-free pop realm with various singles from her 2012 album Red, she was very upfront with her fans regarding the full-on stylistic about-face that awaited them with 2014’s 1989. Announcing its release on an August live stream, she referred to her fifth release as her “first documented, official pop album,” working with veterans like Max Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedder and rising pop whisperer Jack Antonoff on the synth-heavy 13-track LP. 

While the “Shake It Off” video, which dropped immediately after the live stream, was met with some mixed critical takes, the public reaction was immediate: “Shake” shot to No. 1 for four non-consecutive weeks, and as the year rounded out, the critically lauded “Blank Space” — a clever send-up of her public image — sat comfortably atop the Hot 100, where it would remain for the first two weeks of 2015. Slinky follow-up “Style” became yet another top 10 hit for Swift in her soi-disant pop period, followed by a remix of “Bad Blood” featuring Kendrick Lamar (and a star-studded, explosive video with her friends playing action heroes), which became 1989‘s third No. 1 in June. By the time the wistful ballad “Wildest Dreams” came out as a single in late summer (eventually hitting the top 10), it was clear Swift’s superstardom had reached previously unforeseen heights, expanding her fanbase far beyond the confines of country for good.

Read our full Taylor Swift essay here, written by Joe Lynch — along with our 2015 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

In 2015, Justin Bieber admitted that his single “Sorry” was at least “a little bit” about his ex-girlfriend, Selena Gomez. For pop fans who didn’t necessarily care about lyrical nods toward celebrity romance, the dancehall-influenced smash also worked if construed as a general apology for romance-spoiling. Yet “Sorry” worked on a third level that had nothing to do with love: it was the sound of Bieber, a YouTube-bred teen heartthrob, seeking the forgiveness of a young, massive fan base that had watched him personally spiral for years. When Bieber sang “Yeah, I know that I let you down,” he was feasibly addressing millions of Beliebers.

Bieber had reason to apologize: After becoming a household name at the beginning of the 2010s, thanks to tween-courting pop tracks like “Baby” and “One Less Lonely Girl,” a steady string of controversies — a DUI arrest, a vandalism charge, brash threats of retirement, the infamous mop-bucket incident — had derailed his public image by the end of 2014. “Where Are U Now,” a collaboration with the Diplo-Skrillex EDM project Jack U, became an unexpected hit in early 2015 for Bieber, and pointed him toward a fruitful tropical-pop sound. 

Read our full Justin Bieber essay here, written by Jason Lipshutz — along with our 2016 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

As the 2010s progressed, sensitive dudes with guitars were in increasingly short supply at the mainstream’s highest levels. But by the end of 2016, British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran had already headlined arenas around the world, sold nearly 20 million albums worldwide, co-written a No. 1 hit for fellow megastar Justin Bieber, and won a pair of Grammys — all while still mostly looking and sounding like the troubadour who could’ve played your local coffee house last week. And after a year-long hiatus and social media break, the affable bloke that few saw coming as an international superstar managed to take his career to an even bigger — and practically untouchable — level, with his massively successful ÷ (Divide) set. 

Sheeran began his triumphant return by redefining the single release method, making history by dropping two singles at once — the nostalgic rock jam “Castle on the Hill” and the xylophone-accented, hook-heavy banger “Shape of You” — that both debuted in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10 (at No. 6 and No. 1, respectively). “Shape” in particular represented Sheeran’s most dead-center aim at radio thus far — and was originally written with Rihanna in mind, showing just how natural Sheeran’s drift towards pop had been, while still maintaining his own singer-songwriter identity. It would ultimately become his first No. 1 on the Hot 100 as a performer, reigning for 12 total weeks.

Read our full Ed Sheeran essay here, written by Taylor Weatherby — along with our 2017 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

There’s more information at our fingertips than at any point in human history, but it’s still possible to insulate yourself from certain realities. This isn’t a novel observation. You could arrange your life in such a way that you wouldn’t have known that Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” was the most successful song of 2017. (My cousin went most of the year hearing snatches of it in cabs and at bars, thinking it was a solid Justin Timberlake record.) 

Foreground hip-hop — Black music — read the sites that cover that, stick to the good bars and clubs, turn off your radio (or just listen to the right stations), and you’re pretty much there. (Assuming you have the autonomy to do so — young people, the ones pop is marketed to most heavily, are oftentimes subject to the whims of whichever world they’ve been born into.) The dominant narratives are, by now, starting to catch up to your worldview — Sheeran was snubbed at the Grammys — and anyway, you’ve loved rap your whole life: the Grammys don’t mean s–t. 

So in that case, who defines 2017? Easy. Kendrick Lamar.

Read our full Kendrick Lamar and Ed Sheeran sidebar here, written by Ross Scarano.

Drake’s generational popularity by the time of 2018 could only be truly grasped through a deep understanding of late-’10s trends, of collapsing genre borders and changing gatekeepers, of social media-driven virality and narrative-building, and of general Millennial anxieties and aspirations. But in a sense, all you need is one number: 29. 

That’s how many weeks Drake spent at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 2018 — not even counting his crucial uncredited appearance on Travis Scott’s chart-topping “Sicko Mode” — the most for a single year in the chart’s 60-plus history. When you can claim majority ownership of the Hot 100 for a calendar year, chances are you’re just the guy for that year. 

Read our full Drake essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our 2018 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

For a while, Ariana Grande did everything by the book. She worked with the biggest and best producers (Babyface, Max Martin) to create radio-friendly singles (she had eight top 10 tracks on the Hot 100 pre-Sweetener) that featured the right of-the-moment guest stars (Mac Miller, Iggy Azalea, Nicki Minaj) and showcased her superlative voice. But she was stuck in top-tier pop limbo: big enough for an insatiable, powerful army of fans, but not quite big enough to claim ubiquity — much less coolness.

Then she released Sweetener in 2018: the bubbly, optimistic response to both surviving a terrorist attack on her Manchester concert and getting engaged to SNL star Pete Davidson. The shift in her sound from top 40-oriented pop to eclectic, glitchy (via Pharrell) R&B — plus the album’s clear message of resilience — was enough to push her fully into the critical and popular mainstream. But just when Grande seemed on track to finally graduate out of pop princess-dom, she was hit (along with the rest of the music world) by another tragedy, when Mac Miller, her close friend, collaborator and ex, died from an overdose. She and Davidson split not long after. 

Read our full Ariana Grande essay here, written by Natalie Weiner — along with our 2019 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Americans have a checkered history of dismissing things they don’t understand — the metric system, universal healthcare, and of course, K- pop. Until the last few years, the colorful world of Korean pop was a genre that was on the periphery of the American pop mainstream, marked by viral-hit outliers like PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and groups like 2NE1 and Girls’ Generation gracing the lower reaches of the Billboard charts. But after half a decade of internationally successful tours, three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, and a steadily amassed fan ARMY that includes followers from all over the world, RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook — better known as the world-conquering boy band BTS — heralded the genre’s true U.S. breakthrough, and became the greatest pop stars of 2020.

In February 2020, the septet released their fourth studio album Map of the Soul: 7, led by the electrifying “On.” The album earned the group their fourth No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with critics noting their musical diversity and maturity as songwriters. Despite such acclaim and a strong chart debut, the group remained largely off the U.S. radio airwaves. In a push to win over stateside listeners, the track was accompanied by three stunning visuals, a remixed rendition featuring English-language pop star Sia, and a tour of the hottest tickets on late night TV. “On” became BTS’ first entry to land in the top five on the Hot 100, debuting at No. 4. With the group’s international stadium tour slated to kick off in April, things were revving up for BTS to officially take over the U.S. market.

Read our full BTS essay here, written by Mia Nazareno — along with our 2020 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

Not all years in pop music are created equal — sometimes, the stars just align. Here are our picks for the 10 absolute starriest. 

10. 2003

Why One of the Best? Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake broke out as solo superstars, 50 Cent debuted and “Hey Ya!” reigned supreme. 

And Don’t Forget About: Crunk’s turn in the spotlight, thanks to Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz and the Ying Yang Twins crashing the mainstream with the No. 2-peaking “Get Low. “

9. 2010

Why One of the Best? Katy Perry, Kesha and Rihanna made pop radio exciting again, while Lil Wayne, Drake and Nicki Minaj worked on building the Young Money empire. 

And Don’t Forget About: Bruno Mars’ introduction to top 40, guiding B.o.B (“Nothin’ on You”) and Travie McCoy (“Billionaire”) to heavy rotation with guest hooks, then scoring his first solo No. 1 (“Just the Way You Are”). 

Read our full top 10 list sidebar here.

“You guys turned a hard thing into a very, very wonderful experience,” Taylor Swift told an audience of diehard fans at a November screening of her All Too Well short film at New York City’s AMC Lincoln Square theater. Before unveiling the self-directed companion piece to the 10-minute version of the fan favorite epic of the same name, featured on the re-recorded Red (Taylor’s Version), Swift expressed gratitude to a group of supporters that helped turn a non-single breakup track from her original 2012 album into a signature song worthy of expanding past the double-digit minute mark. “All Too Well” could have been little more than a personally revealing footnote to her career, Swift pointed out; instead, the fans identified its intimate power, championed it, and ultimately revived it, to create one of the most eagerly anticipated revisited songs in pop history. “All of this is happening,” Swift told her audience, “because you made this happen.”

Well, yes and no. Swift is correct that the fandom that gathered around “All Too Well” — a long-form songwriting feat, with some of the most evocative lyricism of Swift’s career — in the nine years since its original release helped clear the path for “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” as a capital-E Event stretching beyond the Swifties into the mainstream. Yet she deserves a ton of credit herself: No other popular artist harnessed that type of fan energy with as much passion and imagination in 2021 as Swift, across albums and platforms, on projects that challenged the modern music industry while still succeeding wildly within it. 

Read our full Taylor Swift essay here, written by Jason Lipshutz — along with our 2021 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

In the summer of 2021, Billboard talked to Bad Bunny about him producing Tommy Torres’ new album, El Playlist de Anoche – his first run at producing an album outside the urbano realm. “Everything in life is a risk,” he said then. “I made this album because I wanted to do it and because it fulfilled me.” If there’s one that’s clear about the Puerto Rican chart-topping artist, it’s that any project he works on, he does it for those two reasons — which allows him to deliver genuine projects that connect with countless millions of fans across the globe.  

Statistically both Billboard’s Top Artist of the Year and (for a third consecutive year) Spotify’s most streamed artist globally, El Conejo Malo been on a wild ride since he made his grand return to the stage with El Último Tour del Mundo at the top of 2022, winding his way to the spring release of his blockbuster album Un Verano Sin Ti — which catapulted Bunny to unprecedented heights, on and off the charts.  

Read our full Bad Bunny essay here, written by Griselda Flores — along with our 2022 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.

“9/24/23. Taylor was here.” 

So read the bio of the NFL’s official TikTok account on Sept. 24, as Taylor Swift attended her first Kansas City Chiefs home game of the season as the special guest of her then-rumored beau, star tight end Travis Kelce. Swift’s appearance at Arrowhead Stadium was bigger news than anything that happened across 13 football fields that Sunday; even the reported condiments on the chicken she was eating in her guest box spawned year-defining memes. And so, the National Football League – as powerful, influential and deeply embedded a cultural institution as exists in the United States of America – had no choice but to simp for their new pop overlord. Taylor was here. 

Then again, there were very few places Taylor Swift wasn’t in 2023. Certainly not in North America, which she spent most of the year criss-crossing on her culture-consuming Eras Tour, being feted with gifts, welcome videos, keys to the city, street namings, city namings and Taylor Swift Days in jubilant anticipation of her arrival. And if it wasn’t your city she was coming to that weekend, chances are you still had a good idea where she was headed, because fans, the press and just about everyone else was on Taylor Watch all year – the kind of full-time job that major media companies needed to start specifically hiring reporters for. When Swift was in the building this year, nobody else mattered as much; when she wasn’t in the building, her absence was still bigger news than anyone’s actual attendance. 

Read our full Taylor Swift essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger — along with our 2023 picks for Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars.