Greatest Pop Stars of 21st Century

We celebrate our staff’s pick for the greatest pop star of the 21st century so far with 100 of her most iconic career moments.

With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard has spent the last few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here — and now, we examine the century in Beyoncé, our editorial staff’s pick for the No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century. While Taylor Swift is the century’s biggest pop star by the numbers — from album sales to streams to touring dominance — our editorial staff has chosen Beyoncé as our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of the Century, based on her full 25 years of influence, evolution and impact.

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(Also, have fun reliving our staff’s list of Beyoncé’s 100 Greatest Pop Star Moments, and check out our recently rebuilt list of our picks for the Greatest Pop Star by Year from 1981 to 2023 — which we’ll be adding a 2024 edition to later this month.)

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On March 18, 2000, Beyoncé Knowles topped the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time this century. She did so as a member of the pop&B quartet Destiny’s Child, who’d already scored a No. 1 on the chart in ‘99 with the scrub-taunting classic “Bills, Bills, Bills,” but this was one was even better: “Say My Name,” a phone-call argument blown out to a near-operatic melodrama, replete with sweeping staccato strings, panicked backing vocals and a beat that races on the pre-chorus like it just got some terrifying news. At the center of the futuristic (but TRL-ready) production’s anxiety attack was Beyoncé, cool and in control as she demanded the acknowledgment she knew she deserved: “You actin’ kinda shady/ Ain’t callin’ me baby/ Better say my name.” 

On March 2, 2024, Beyoncé Knowles – who’d added a “-Carter” to her last name by that point – topped the Hot 100 for the 12th time this century. This time she did so solo, with “Texas Hold ‘Em,” a stomping, banjo-led hoot-along made for (and in tribute to) the dive bars and dancefloors of the South. The song was devised as the lead single to her acclaimed Cowboy Carter album, which featured Bey road-tripping through country music’s past, present and future – with navigation assistance from the genre’s living legends and rising stars – and “Hold ‘Em” invited fans along for the ride, as long as they came correct with it: “It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown/ Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor, now.” 

It’s almost too perfectly illustrative of the kind of career that Beyoncé has had this past quarter-century that she should top the Hot 100 in the same month of both its first and last year, and with two such wildly disparate songs. There aren’t a lot of obvious threads tying together “Say My Name” and “Texas Hold ‘Em”; they’re from different genres and different generations (obviously), with virtually no overlapping collaborators, themes or even promotional techniques. The only thing they have in common – besides, of course, their fantastic commercial success and top-level artistry – is the singer behind them, a performer and creator whose commitment to innovation, evolution and all-around excellence has made her the bar against which all other pop stars this century have long been measured. 

The greatness of Beyoncé as a pop star is both immediately obvious on its surface and worthy of extensive exploration in its vastness. You can watch her on stage for half a minute and instantly recognize that she’s an all-timer; her inherent combination of dazzling beauty, impeccable fashion, captivating staging, otherworldly physicality and simultaneously earthy and skyscraping vocals all speaks for itself. But to understand the full scope of her impact also requires a deep knowledge of 21st century American pop music and culture, and the ways in which she has dominated it, elevated it and transformed it over the past 25 years. Few artists this period can match her in any of the most critical basic categories of pop stardom – commercial success, performance abilities, critical acclaim and accolades, industry influence, iconic cultural moments – and absolutely no one can equal her in all of them. Even Taylor Swift, the lone artist who really challenged Beyoncé for the top spot on these rankings – and who does have a clear statistical lead on Bey in many key categories; more on that later – simply hasn’t been around for long enough to be able to match the expansiveness of her quarter-century of dominance. 

And the most remarkable thing about the Houston-born superstar’s greatness is how consistent it’s been. She was still a teenager managed by her father when “Say My Name” hit No. 1; she was a 42-year-old married mother of three by the time “Texas Hold ‘Em” got there – and in between the two, there were precisely zero moments in which Beyoncé was not *BEYONCÉ*. There are no flop eras for Bey, no periods where she disappeared for a half-decade, no clear missteps that were not immediately and emphatically course-corrected. There are only varying degrees of winning for over two decades. In this sense, her closest peers this century are not other pop stars, they’re LeBron James and Serena Williams.

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Which isn’t to say there hasn’t been some drama for Beyoncé along the way. While the century started with her already rolling commercially – “Say My Name” debuted on the very last Hot 100 of 1999 – it also began on precarious footing for her group, who had just swapped out half its lineup. Fans found out about the lineup change when the “Name” video debuted in February 2000 with new members Farrah Franklin and Michelle Williams joining Bey and longtime friend Kelly Rowland in the clip in place of LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett, who’d both sung and written on the song, and who had accused Matthew Knowles – the group’s manager and Beyoncé’s father – of withholding profits. Just a few months later, Franklin departed as well, leaving the group a trio. 

But while the turmoil in Destiny’s Child made headlines and stoked behind-the-scenes gossip, it hardly slowed down the group’s commercial momentum. If anything, it sped it up, as “Say My Name” was quickly followed by “Jumpin’ Jumpin’,” another top five Hot 100 hit whose frenzied hooks and appropriately pogoing beat pushed the group further to R&B’s crossover forefront. In a pop era ran by larger-than-life boy bands and female solo supernovas, Destiny’s Child was the rare girl group that could hold its own at the highest levels of turn-of-the-century top 40; the choruses were that massive, the production was that cutting-edge and, of course, Beyoncé herself was that magnetic a frontwoman. 

The group also stood out from the pack in its projection of feminist strength; while many TRL-era starlets released moony-eyed ballads declaring devotion to their men, Destiny’s Child seemed far more comfortable singing about demanding more from them, or not needing them at all. (The group wouldn’t even release a straightforward love song as a single until its final album.) When “Independent Women Part 1” arrived on the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack, it made for the group’s first indelible pop culture moment: The song big-upped the hit film’s action star triumvirate of Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz, but it was the group themselves who sounded like the baddest trio in the game. “Women” spent 11 weeks atop the Hot 100 from 2000-01, confirming the group as superstars. 

“Independent Women” hadn’t even finished its chart run yet when “Survivor” was released as the title track and lead single from Destiny’s Child’s new LP, an inspired twist on public quipping about the group’s turnover being like the reality TV show of the same name. The group turned the joking into an anthem celebrating both the trio’s perseverance and continued classiness in the face of such mockery – because their mamas taught them better than that – and they proved that the best revenge is living well, as the single went to No. 2 on the Hot 100. Meanwhile, its parent album debuted atop the Billboard 200, with 663,000 copies sold – dwarfing the first-week numbers posted the prior decade by R&B crossover predecessors like Boyz II Men and TLC, demonstrating how massive DC had grown over its two-year winning streak of smash hits. 

Survivor also saw Beyoncé taking a stronger hand in the group’s writing and producing; follow-up single “Bootylicious” was penned by the singer in response to criticism about her body image and ended up not only being the group’s fourth Hot 100 No. 1, but Bey’s first (and hardly last) time adding to the cultural lexicon. By the end of the album cycle, the group was already plotting solo releases for all three members, with Beyoncé’s obviously the most-anticipated: Not only was she the group’s most prominent singer and most visible member, but she’d increased her profile with a star turn as the titular femme fatale in MTV’s Bizet update Carmen: A Hip-Hopera, and with a supporting role as the Blaxploitation-riffing Foxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers in Goldmember. 

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She would actually end up the last of the three to make her proper LP debut. Williams and Rowland released Heart to Yours and Simply Deep, respectively, in 2002 – while Rowland also guested on one of the year’s biggest hits, the sentimental Nelly duet “Dilemma.” Meanwhile, Beyoncé got off to a bit of a false start with Goldmember soundtrack single “Work It Out,” which paired her with ‘00s superproducers The Neptunes, but played to none of their strengths with its stilted ‘60s throwback groove and ultimately missed the Hot 100 entirely. Luckily for Bey, she had a hip-hop collab of her own to come before year’s end: “03 Bonnie & Clyde,” a top five Hot 100 hit that saw her convincingly riding shotgun alongside the biggest rapper in the game, Jay-Z, and which helped get her back on track commercially in time for her belated solo bow.

And when that proper solo launch arrived in May 2003, it was a no-doubter. Arriving on an exultant Chi-Lites horn sample and an addictive Rich Harrison-helmed bubble-funk groove, “Crazy in Love” was an obvious and immediate winner. Beyoncé glided perfectly over the verses before hitting an increasingly (and fittingly) unhinged pitch on the choruses, while an on-top-of-the-world Jay returned the favor to his “Bonnie” by playing hype man (“History in the making!”) on the song’s intro and delivering a perfectly timed guest verse, stoking continued rumors about the two of them being a real-life couple in the process. The song took over the summer of 2003, spending eight weeks atop the Hot 100 and ultimately coming to be considered one of the greatest pop songs of all time. 

The hits kept coming from there: “Baby Boy,” a dancehall-oriented banger featuring a then-blazing Sean Paul, followed “Crazy” to No. 1 for another nine weeks that autumn, with the bent-not-broken ballad “Me, Myself & I” and the Donna Summer-lifting come-on “Naughty Girl” making it four top five hits in a row from the album for the newly minted solo superstar. All four smashes could be found on Dangerously in Love, which topped the Billboard 200 albums chart and won best contemporary R&B album at the 2004 Grammys – one of five awards Bey took home that night. The arguable highlight of her evening came apart from any of those wins, as she opened the awards alongside no less a pop and soul legend than Prince, holding her own next to the Purple One for a medley blending both of their hits, and demonstrating that the 22-year-old was already nearing the all-time pop pantheon’s inner circle.

As much recognition as Beyoncé was gaining for her hit singles and albums, she was becoming equally renowned for such performances, which also included spectacular debuts in 2003 at the MTV Video Music Awards and BET Awards. Those awards shows also of course celebrated her equally striking music videos, including a “Crazy in Love” clip that spawned three or four instantly iconic Beyoncé looks and a much-copied booty-pop dance to the “oh, oh” breakdown that also became an early signature. All together, Beyoncé was our staff’s Greatest Pop Star of 2003, defining pop superstardom in a post-peak-TRL era, and helping to move top 40 away from the Euro-based pop sounds of the turn of the century to something funkier and more hip-hop-based; the following year, the Hot 100 would be absolutely dominated by Black artists. 

With her solo bonafides more than established, Bey would spend 2004 doing one more lap around the Billboard charts alongside Kelly and Michelle in Destiny’s Child. The group reunited for that year’s Destiny Fulfilled, which saw them embracing grittier sounds on hits like the marching band-led “Lose My Breath” and the trap-tinged “Soldier” (featuring then-ascendant southern rappers T.I. and Lil Wayne), and playing devoted domestic partners for the first time on the lush “Cater 2 U.” The trio’s expanded palette on the set met with positive reception from fans and a No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 – though even in its title, Destiny Fulfilled seemed to be telegraphing that the LP would be the group’s swan song. And despite occasional reunions for live performances or one-off releases in the decades since, DC has yet to record its followup.

As she was becoming one of the decade’s leading pop stars, Beyoncé was also setting her sights on proper film stardom. She notched another box office success with a supporting role in 2006’s Steve Martin-led remake of comedy classic The Pink Panther – also scoring her third Hot 100 No. 1 on the soundtrack with the Bun B- and Slim Thug-featuring, Swizz Beatz-produced “Check on It,” her most Houston-sounding hit to that point – and filming her first starring role in a theatrical release with the Bill Condon-directed adaptation of the famed Broadway musical Dreamgirls. The film was also a hit, with Beyoncé scoring a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Deena Jones, frontwoman of the fictional Dreams girl group. Bey would go on to play major roles that decade as Etta James in the Chess Records story Cadillac Records and as a threatened wife in the thriller Obsessed – though she never quite became an A-lister in film the way she was in music, and has mostly put acting on the backburner for the past 15 years.

While she was filming Dreamgirls, Beyoncé’s second solo album came together quickly, as she recorded for two weeks in relative secrecy with go-to producers like Harrison, Swizz and The Neptunes. The result was September 2006’s B’Day – largely inspired by her Dreamgirls music and character, and much rawer-sounding and more aggressive than her solo debut – which debuted at No. 1 with over half a million in first-week sales. The singles rollout wasn’t quite as bulletproof as Dangerously’s, with the “Crazy”-reminiscent “Deja Vu” (also featuring Jay-Z) topping out at No. 4 on the Hot 100 and the furious “Ring the Alarm” peaking just outside the top 10. But any worries about underperformance were put to bed by third single “Irreplaceable,” an acoustic mid-tempo kiss-off cooked up with Norwegian production duo Stargate and rising singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, which topped the Hot 100 for 10 weeks and spawned two of the year’s biggest pop quotables in “You must not know ‘bout me” and “To the left, to the left.”

Meanwhile, Beyoncé was beginning to scale up her albums, videos and live experiences. She released her first deluxe edition in April 2007, including her first hyped event duet in the new track “Beautiful Liar,” a No. 3-peaking collab with fellow global superstar Shakira. That release was accompanied by the new B’Day Video Anthology Album, which included visuals for 13 of the extended album’s tracks – showing an unusual commitment to the music video at a time when the medium was at a low in its cultural currency – which extended the album’s lifespan on MTV and BET and laid the groundwork for future full-length visual projects. Also that April, she set out on her first solo headlining world tour, backed by her all-female band Suga Mama, which drew strong sales and reviews and established Bey as a marquee touring act. After proving herself an A-level hitmaker, Beyoncé was now also becoming a standard-setter in all the other most important elements of pop stardom.

The next year, she returned with I Am… Sasha Fierce, signaling her loftier ambitions with the album’s dual-disc split (into I Am ballads and Sasha Fierce up-tempos) and its black-and-white color scheme. The pop-rock ballad “If I Were a Boy” was the first single and obvious focus track, a show-stopping vocal showcase for Beyoncé with a ruefully double-standard-bemoaning lyric and a gender-swapping, high-concept video. But audiences more quickly embraced the simultaneously released “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” a riotous girls’-night-out singalong with a moonbounce beat co-produced by ‘00s pop&B gold-spinners The-Dream and Tricky Stewart. The song had no real instrumental melody, but Beyoncé’s vocal hooks came so fast and furious that it still became one of the late-decade’s defining hits – helped by a low-budget, hyper-kinetically choreographed video that quickly infiltrated all corners of pop culture, recreated by everyone from Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live to Liza Minnelli in the Sex and the City 2 film.  

Beyoncé also brought the video to the VMAs that September with her first of several all-time performances on the awards show, leading an army of dancers with unstoppable energy and jaw-dropping physicality. Unfortunately, her night was defined by Kanye West’s timeline-altering decision to storm the stage during Taylor Swift’s first career win (for “You Belong With Me”) to protest that “Single Ladies” should’ve taken the best female video trophy instead – while a mortified Bey watched helplessly from the crowd. Though the interruption defined the awards – and an entire moment in pop culture – Beyoncé was able to end the evening on a positive note, as she took the top prize of video of the year for “Ladies,” and then invited Swift on stage to get the celebratory moment that Kanye had previously overwhelmed, starting a career-long friendship between the two superstars. Meanwhile, “Ladies” and the ensuing stage crash both helped revive interest in the music video format and absolutely resuscitated the VMAs, both of which had been undergoing an identity crisis for years before.

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Beyoncé ended the first decade of the century at her highest level of esteem yet: I Am… earned her first Grammy nomination for album of the year at the 2010 awards, and she’d even sung Etta James’ “At Last” at President Obama’s Inaugural Ball as his and First Lady Michelle Obama’s first dance song in 2009. She began the ‘10s by taking her first year-long break from recording and performing – though she still snuck in an appearance in another game-changing video, with Lady Gaga on the surreal crime-musical odyssey “Telephone.” When she returned in 2011, it was to a top 40 world that had essentially gone into hyperdrive, with turbo-pop and EDM having taken over radio, and even many of her pop&B peers embracing propulsive beats and party-starting urgency. 

But Beyoncé went the other way with it on 4, titled after her lucky number (and it being her fourth solo LP), and built mostly around a more meditative, adult R&B sound. Though the album became her fourth straight to debut atop the Billboard 200, the first two singles failed to really catch on in the new pop world: the Major Lazer-sampling lead single “Run the World (Girls)” proved a little too aggressive for top 40, while follow-up “Best Thing I Never Had” retread past ballad territory a bit too closely – and this time, there was no “Irreplaceable” or “Single Ladies” to save the day commercially. But later singles like the ecstatically explosive “Countdown” and the sublime ‘80s R&B throwback “Love on Top” caught on with fans and with critics, ending on a lot of year-end lists from publications who would’ve previously had little interest in non-globe-conquering Beyoncé singles. 

The album ended up her lowest-selling to that point, and her only non-soundtrack solo release to date to not generate a top 10 Hot 100 hit. But it came off more like a conscious shift to a new phase of her stardom – which made sense for the then-30-year-old performer, who had just had her first child, Blue Ivy, with now-husband Jay-Z, and whose social circle included the couple living in the White House – than an outright commercial disappointment. A triumphant Super Bowl halftime performance in February 2013 re-confirmed her peerlessness as a performer and the unassailability of her catalog, while also further validating the 4 era with spellbinding renditions of “End of Time,” “Run the World” and an a cappella snippet of “Love on Top.” If Beyoncé had fully pivoted to grown-up R&B at that point and mostly stopped competing with the era’s other pop megastars for mainstream attention, it would have been understandable and unsurprising, and her legacy as an all-time great would’ve still been more than secure. 

Instead, Beyoncé decided to reassert her sovereignty in a way no one could’ve predicted. In the earliest hours of Dec. 13, 2013 – after a long period of relative radio silence – a full self-titled Beyoncé album unexpectedly fell from the skies, debuting online with no prior announcement or promotion. The surprise set featured an impressive array of cutting-edge collaborators, including a pair of rising-star guest appearances from Drake and Frank Ocean, and another luvved-up Jay-Z collab on lead single “Drunk in Love.” It was Beyoncé’s most mature, most direct and most coherent full-length album to date – plus it debuted alongside its own full-length visual album, with videos for all 14 of its tracks. And no one knew a thing about any of it until the order link showed up on their social media timelines at 12:52 on a Friday morning. 

It is near-impossible to overstate the importance of Beyoncé’s surprise drop. There was simply no precedent for an artist on or even near Bey’s level releasing any kind of secret musical project on an unsuspecting pop world – let alone one this good, let alone one with an incredibly sumptuous and enriching full-length visual accompaniment. Even rock greats Radiohead’s acclaimed In Rainbows, famously released as an industry-rocking pay-what-you-want digital album in 2007, was announced nine days in advance of its release; by contrast, fans had no reason to suspect a new Beyoncé LP was even an imminent proposition until it was already available for digital download. For such a thoroughly realized project by one of the most famous and followed artists in the world to have remained entirely shrouded in confidentiality until its moment of release was mind-boggling.

More significant than the tah-dah parlor trick aspect of Beyoncé’s self-titled reveal, though, was the message that the set – and its tremendous initial success, bowing at No. 1 with a then-solo-career-best 617,000 first-week units despite just three days of tracking-week availability – projected about the future of the album format. For most of the 21st century, star artists and their labels had resisted the technological advancements in the industry that had cut into traditional CD purchases – file-sharing, then iTunes, then streaming – in the hopes that they could somehow hold onto the model that had driven such incredible sales numbers in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. Beyoncé was the first album of its kind to fully embrace the new possibilities of the digital age, generating the most talk of any 2013 pop release by eschewing the stodginess of traditional months-long album rollouts for an approach that felt exponentially more timely, in a way that simply wouldn’t have been possible in the CD’s golden age. The album format, increasingly viewed by industry leaders as an inconvenient means to an end, was suddenly exciting again. It was arguably the single most pivotal moment in all of 21st-century pop music. 

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And its industry impact was profound. The next year would see artists as big and wide-ranging as Skrillex, U2 and D’Angelo experimenting with the sneak-drop, and by 2016, the entire music calendar was seemingly built around such Event Releases: Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, Rihanna’s Anti, Frank Ocean’s Endless and Blonde and Bey’s sister Solange’s A Seat at the Table all arrived that year with a mini-avalanche of buzz but little or no advance notice. In a flash, Beyoncé had reoriented a singles-driven pop market around the long-player, with an album that had to be consumed at once, whose hit singles even sounded much better in the context of the whole record. Reverberations of that transformation continue to be felt today, when stars like Bad Bunny and Charli XCX can command a year without a single traditional pop radio smash, but with albums that excite fans with their cohesive full packages and unconventional promotional rollouts. 

And while the promotion for Beyoncé’s self-titled album didn’t begin until its actual late-2013 release, it continued well into 2014. She closed out the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour she’d been on since early 2013 with European dates that spring, before heading out just a few months later with hubby Jay-Z on the On the Run co-headlining trek, taking her to stadiums for the first time. A couple of months later, she dropped the Nicki Minaj-featuring remix to Beyoncé highlight “Flawless,” an internet-stopping release whose lack of an official streaming or digital release until the set’s “Platinum Edition” reissue at year’s end meant its chart position never reflected its massive cultural import – though that edition did spawn a medium-sized chart hit in the No. 13-peaking “7/11,” which also became a fan favorite for its rambunctious hotel-set music video.  

Beyoncé commemorated the era with her Video Vanguard performance at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, rejecting the traditional hits medley performance that has come to accompany the award in favor of an awe-inspiring 16-minute run through all 14 of the self-titled’s original tracks. That mini-set peaked with a performance of the original “Flawless,” which saw Bey standing in front of lingering “FEMINIST” text on the screen behind her – quoted from a mid-song sample of a speech on the word’s meaning by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – becoming a signature image of mid-’10s pop culture, and a significant moment in the advancement of gender discourse in pop music and culture. For the total of her accomplishments and her centrality to that year’s pop music – even in releases she wasn’t directly involved in – we named Beyoncé the Greatest Pop Star of 2014, making her the only two-time winner of the yearly honor to space out her two Ws a decade apart. The Queen was once again the Queen. 

Though the year was full of major victories for Beyoncé, she was also involved in another three-star drama in which she was again the onlooker. That May, TMZ posted silent security footage from a Manhattan hotel in which Bey, Jay-Z and Solange entered an elevator following a Met Gala after-party, and Solange furiously attacked Jay for unclear reasons, before being restrained by a security guard. Rumors would fly that the incident had to do with an incident of Jay-Z proving unfaithful to his superstar wife, and though Bey largely dismissed the mess on the “Flawless” remix (“Of course sometimes s–t goes down when there’s a billion dollars on an elevator”), memory of it stuck as a notable moment of messiness for the usually tidy cultural dominance of the Knowles-Carter clan. 

Catharsis would come in 2016, as Beyoncé would respond to both the endless gossip and the entire Year of the Event Release with her sixth solo album Lemonade. But first, the set was preceded in February by the release of her booming, catchphrase-strewn “Formation” single as an exclusive to then-new streaming service TIDAL, though the video received even more attention than the song for its innovative staging and choreography, its New Orleans-evocative (though Pasadena-shot) setting and Black Lives Matter-inspired imagery. (The latter part would end up getting serious backlash – and an eventual boycott – from conservatives and cops who felt her message to be anti-police; Bey responded by selling #BoycottBeyonce merch.) Bey would bring the song to the Super Bowl 50 halftime show the next day, during a set ostensibly headlined by Coldplay, and also announced the Formation World Tour in a commercial following the performance – the first-ever stadium tour to be headlined by a female artist, incredibly. 

The positive response to “Formation” and its accompanying tour set the stage for Lemonade, which arrived with the year’s biggest release night, as it premiered in visual album format on HBO that April. The swaggering, roots-celebrating “Formation” turned out to be something of a red herring for the larger set, which instead focused on the singer-songwriter’s feelings of hurt, betrayal and anger in attempting to process a partner’s cheating – and her eventual forgiveness on the path to reconciliation – all largely assumed, of course, to be an autobiographical account of Jay-Z’s long-rumored infidelity. The album and accompanying film drew glowing reviews for its raw emotional content, its genre-hopping tracklist – which saw Bey collaborate with Jack White on the scuzzy “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” The Weeknd on the Isaac Hayes-sampling “6 Inch” and eventually even The Chicks on a live version of the stomping country warning “Daddy Lessons” – and its stunning coherence as her first true concept album. Largely considered her magnum opus today, and an enduring fan favorite for showing a more vulnerable side of the pop superhero, Lemonade cemented Beyoncé as one of the great albums artists of her generation.

Lemonade was also a resounding commercial success, posting 653,000 units in its first week and finishing at No. 4 on the 2016 Year-End Billboard 200. But for the second straight album, the chart peaks of the set’s hits were improperly reflective of their overall impact: the album being kept as a TIDAL exclusive during its original run depressed its streaming numbers, while top 40 radio – then largely fixated on the mid-tempo EDM-pop of The Chainsmokers and Justin Bieber’s Purpose era – mostly ignored the set, with the No. 10 bow of “Formation” proving the era’s highest chart peak. Still, visuals like Beyoncé lounging in a throne-like chair next to a twerking Serena Williams in the “Sorry” clip and wielding a baseball bat while strutting down the street in a yellow dress in “Hold Up” became unforgettable mid-’10s snapshot images, while lyrical hooks across the album like “He better call Becky with the good hair” and “I got hot sauce in my bag, swag” proved majorly memeable. Lemonade further proved that classic hit singles were no longer a prerequisite in 2010s pop for driving the culture: As Bey herself boasted in “Formation,” “You know you that b–ch when you cause all this conversation.”

Despite the album’s combination of unanimous critical praise and tremendous commercial and cultural success, one prize continued to elude Beyoncé: the album of the year Grammy. She had understandably lost on I Am… Sasha Fierce to Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Fearless, and more surprisingly took a backseat to alt-rocker Beck for his somber Morning Light in 2015, when Beyoncé was also nominated. (Kanye was captured approaching the Grammys stage after the latter snub, though he thankfully thought better of it that time.) Lemonade made her 0 for 3 in the category when the award instead went to Adele in 2017 – who, to be fair, had just sold a record 3.38 million units of her 25 album in one week. Nonetheless, many bemoaned Bey’s repeatedly being overlooked in the category, including Adele herself, who called Beyoncé “my artist of my life” and raved about Lemonade during her tearful acceptance speech.

Beyoncé took most of 2017 off after becoming pregnant with twins Rumi and Sir – with her Instagram posts first announcing her pregnancy and then sharing her first image with her newborns quickly becoming the first- and second-most liked posts in the app’s history at the time. She had been supposed to headline that year’s Coachella, but instead used the 2018 festival to make her return to live performance. With a later-stated desire to bring “our culture to Coachella,” Beyoncé’s debut at the festival – as the first Black female headliner in its 20 years  – served as something of a history lesson through its depth of musical references, delivered with the help of a marching band and majorette dancers, in the HBCU tradition. The performance drew such a rapturous response – not just from those in attendance, but from millions around the globe live-streaming the much-anticipated performance – that Bey later released it as both a Netflix special and a live album (both titled Homecoming), with the latter reaching the Billboard 200’s top five and becoming one of the year’s top-reviewed releases.

At the turn of the decade, Beyoncé embarked on another ambitious multipart, multimedia project diving into the roots of her Blackness – this time honoring the artists and sounds of Africa, first with her album The Lion King: The Gift, a Bey-led soundtrack to the 2019 film remake of The Lion King in which she voiced Nala. She had been integrating explicitly African work into her work since 4, with legendary Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti and Mozambican dance group Tofo Tofo bearing on the music and choreography of “End of Time” and “Run the World.” But The Gift took it a step further in showcasing the artists themselves: Afrobeats and Afropop leading lights like Mr. Eazi, Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tiwa Savage and Yemi Alade all featured on the set. Most also appeared in Black Is King, the Bey-conceptualized accompanying 2020 Disney+ film, a sumptuous display of African-derived fashion, style, art and dance presented through the lens of a Lion King-esque story of a young African prince reclaiming his identity and his pride. The film drew minor blowback for some perceived “Wakandafication” of Africa, but far more praise for its staggering visuals and deeply felt connection to the continent portrayed. 

Though her work in the back half of the 2010s established Beyoncé as both a top-flight visual storyteller and a committed conduit and explorer of Black culture within mainstream spaces – in ways that no other 21st century star had even attempted – her major pop moments were becoming a little fewer and farther between. But even though she had no huge crossover singles as a lead artist during the period, she still found her way onto such hits: In late 2017, she appeared on both a duet version of Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect,” boosting that song to No. 1 on the Hot 100, and a bilingual (and charity-minded) remix to J Balvin and Willy William’s “Mi Gente,” which shot the song to No. 3. In 2020, she also proved she could still hang with the next generation of Houston stars by blessing the remix to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” convincingly trading bars with the star MC and again rocketing the song to the Hot 100’s apex.

Though she had dropped a number of full-length projects in the meantime – including 2018’s Everything Is Love team-up with Jay-Z, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and closed the chapter on their moment of crisis as a couple – by 2022, Beyoncé still hadn’t released a proper solo follow-up to 2016’s Lemonade. That changed with the July unveiling of Renaissance, a planned first installment in a “three-act project,” with the first part meant to delve into the rich history of club music and ballroom culture. The set was inspired by Beyoncé’s late cousin (known to her as “Uncle Johnny”) who’d introduced her to much of the culture, and by a desire to celebrate the world going “back outside,” as she stated in lead single “Break My Soul,” following the societal shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. 

By 2022, fans thought they knew what to expect from a Beyoncé new album rollout: a surprise release with no advance singles or promotion, ultimately paired with a full-length visual accompaniment. This time, she swerved again by returning to a more traditional approach: Renaissance was publicized over a month in advance in a Vogue June cover story, with “Break My Soul” announced and then released as an advance single less than a week later. The album arrived in July to yet more rave reviews and another bow atop the Billboard 200, with critics and fans delighting in the set’s DJ set-like pacing and structuring, its boundless dancefloor energy and its deep web of cultural and musical references. “Soul” also topped the Hot 100, and second single “Cuff It” became Bey’s first proper solo smash of the TikTok era, as the ebullient disco-pop jam (with writing from genre legend Nile Rodgers) went viral over the course of late 2022 and early 2023, ultimately becoming the longest-running Hot 100 solo hit of her career.

As of mid-2023, much to its surprise, the Bey Hive still hadn’t gotten the expected visual accompaniment to Renaissance. What they got was something better: the Renaissance World Tour, Bey’s wildly successful first post-pandemic global trek, which saw her performing the new album in its entirety, while also integrating myriad other catalog jams into its club-like flow. Thanks again to TikTok and other social media, the tour made headlines at virtually every stop, as fans and outlets noted outfit changes, tweaks to lyrics (“Badu Badu Badu Badu”) and celebrity attendees, while daughter Blue Ivy – by then a Grammy winner for her appearance on The Gift’s “Brown Skin Girl” – made her warmly received stage debut, dancing to “My Power” and “Black Parade” during the show. The “mute challenge,” a nightly moment in which the entire stadium was meant to hush upon Beyoncé’s “everybody on mute” delivery from “Energy,” also regularly went viral for its various successes and failures. By the end of it, fans had (mostly) stopped asking for the videos: “You are the visual, baby,” Bey told her Louisville crowd that July.

There would be no six-year wait for the Renaissance follow-up: A Verizon commercial airing during the 2024 Super Bowl trumpeted Beyoncé’s return in February, with “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” debuting that night as the first tastes of Cowboy Carter, Bey’s long-rumored full-length country exploration. Though she would soon clarify, “This ain’t a country album. This is a BEYONCÉ album,” she hinted heavily that the LP was inspired by her “Daddy Lessons” performance alongside the Chicks at the 2016 CMA Awards, which met huge praise, but also some backlash criticizing her inclusion at the ceremonies. The full album was a rip-roaring journey through the genre’s history and how Beyoncé saw herself fitting into (and out of) it, and another chart-topping success. The biggest pop impact of Cowboy Carter, however, came from guest artist Shaboozey, who springboarded from his two appearances into crossover stardom with his record-tying 19-week Hot 100 No. 1 “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” neatly demonstrating how Beyoncé currently stands as the most important link between pop’s past and its future. 

The longevity of Beyoncé remains continually awe-inspiring. In 2023, a full 20 years after her first year of being awarded Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star status, she finished No. 3 in our yearly ranking: an endurance at pop’s forefront that not even solo Michael Jackson, our Greatest Pop Star of 1983 and Bey’s closest 20th-century predecessor, can rightly claim. At a time when most of her pop peers – even the best ones – have either retired from music, faded from the limelight or simply contented themselves with recreating past glories, Beyoncé remains steadfastly committed to pushing forward. She does not chase trends or youth; even when collaborating with newer artists, she is able to meet them on common ground that does not result in either party being compromised or contorted. Instead, she chases greatness: fully realized artistic works that will add not only to her legacy, but to the culture and to the history of popular music.

It is not a coincidence that in the past three years, discussion of pop music at its highest levels of success and achievement has often boiled down to a discussion of two artists: Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Partly this is due to a quirk of synched-up scheduling: Both pop icons released much-anticipated new albums in the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2024, and went on globe-conquering world tours (with box office-besting film accompaniments) in between them. Partly this is due to their real-life friendship, with both attending each other’s film premieres in 2023 and continuing to support one other even as they are invariably pitted against each other (even incidentally, as on lists like this one). But largely, it is because over those years, Taylor has reached the level of pop star greatness – with the industry-shaking impact of her Taylor’s Version re-recordings and her Eras Tour, with the tremendous commercial achievements of Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, with her unprecedented overall cultural ubiquity – that previously, only Beyoncé could really lay claim to over the past 25 years. 

If you go by the sheer numbers, Taylor would easily top this list — and she will undoubtedly reign on many of the chart-based quarter-century rankings we’ll publish in 2025. Even with her late start, she has more No. 1 albums and as many No. 1 singles this century as Beyoncé. More pressingly, the statistical heights she’s reached are ones neither Bey nor any other artist this century can equal. She has seven million-selling first weeks, including for both 1989 *and* 1989 (Taylor’s Version), as well as an unthinkable 2.61 million for this year’s Poets; Bey has never moved a million units in a week. Poets and Cowboy Carter are both up for album of the year at the 2025 Grammys, but despite Beyoncé now being the most awarded artist in the show’s history, Taylor is going for her record-extending fifth AOTY win and Bey still her first. The Eras Tour numbers have not yet been officially reported to Billboard Boxscore, but the final grosses are expected to dwarf not only the Renaissance World Tour, but every other tour in music history. In 2023, when Beyoncé was our staff’s No. 3 Greatest Pop Star, our No. 1 was Taylor Swift – her third win, the only artist with that many – and the gap between her and the rest of the pack was the biggest it’s been in the history of this project. There is zero question who the biggest pop star in the world is right now, and anyone who wanted to make the case for her as the century’s greatest would have a fair and reasonable argument with which to do so.

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But when you’re talking about greatness, and when you’re talking about greatness for the 21st century specifically, no one has a longer or fuller track record than Beyoncé. It is insanely impressive that Taylor has even made it a discussion after missing the whole first quarter of the period, but only Beyoncé has spent the entirety of the last 25 years exemplifying greatness in every form imaginable. With every album, every single, every music video, every live performance, every photo shoot and promo campaign and release strategy over the last quarter-century, she has pursued excellence thoroughly and relentlessly, and the number of times where she’s notably fallen short in that pursuit doesn’t even approach double digits. Her greatness is so wide-ranging and expansive that we just ranked the 100 moments this century that best display it, and we still had another 50-plus in reserve that it broke our hearts to have to leave on the cutting room floor. There’s just no other artist this century – and maybe only a couple in the previous one – with a full 20-plus-year catalog of great moments like that. 

Again, it’s hard not to draw the parallel with someone like LeBron James: Yes, as he ages into his 40s, players have passed and will continue to pass him in terms of their real-time accomplishments. But as long as LeBron is playing at an extremely high level, he will be considered and treated as the greatest – particularly by other players – for the breadth of who he is and what he’s consistently done in the sport for decades now. Similarly, Beyoncé simply remains the standard for pop stardom this century, especially for those who came of age with her greatness as a given; ask the other 24 pop stars on this list who the greatest pop star of the century is and it would be surprising if she was not the answer for the majority of them. She’s been *BEYONCÉ* for 25 years now, and as she continues to challenge herself (and by extension, the rest of the pop world) to find new and different ways to be define greatness, it doesn’t seem like she’s going to stop being *BEYONCÉ* anytime soon. Better say her name. 

THE COMPLETE LIST:

Honorable Mentions

25. Katy Perry24. Ed Sheeran23. Bad Bunny22. One Direction21. Lil Wayne20. Bruno Mars19. BTS18. The Weeknd17. Shakira16. Jay-Z15. Miley Cyrus14. Justin Timberlake13. Nicki Minaj12. Eminem11. Usher10. Adele9. Ariana Grande8. Justin Bieber7. Kanye West6. Britney Spears5. Lady Gaga4. Drake3. Rihanna2. Taylor Swift1. Beyoncé

With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard has spent the last few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here — and now, we examine the century in Rihanna, who pushed her way into the center of pop music and pop culture for a game-changing decade of absolutely dazzling dominance, then headed back to the sidelines. (Hear more discussion of Rihanna and explanation of her list ranking on our Greatest Pop Stars podcast, with her episode debuting Wednesday, Nov. 20.)

In 2007, Rihanna told Paper that she wanted to be “the Black Madonna.” Nearly 20 years have passed since, and the billionaire pop icon has taken the 20th century’s greatest female pop star template and fashioned into a blueprint of her own. Rihanna’s version – the Rihprint, if you will – combines a unmistakable vocal tone, a rarely faulty ear for hits, an eye for fearless, futuristic fashion and a complete rejection of the role model archetype in favor of a gleeful embrace of sexual liberation. It’s now arguably the most prized and clamored-after playbook for burgeoning 21st century pop singers. 

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Born Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Bridgetown, the capital of the picturesque island country of Barbados, Rihanna’s musical odyssey boasts a familiar beginning: she and two childhood friends started a girl group. Without a name or any original material, the trio scored an audition with Evan Rogers, a veteran producer with credits dating back to 1984’s landmark Beat Street soundtrack, who remarked to Entertatinment Weekly, “[Rihanna] carried herself like a star even when she was 13. But the killer was when she opened her mouth to sing [Destiny’s Child’s cover of ‘Emotion’]. She was a little rough around the edges, but she had this edge to her voice.”  

Rihanna

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Those two things – her effortlessly natural allure and her distinct vocal tone that infuses her Bajan accent with trademark throaty rasp – proved to be the most important building blocks for her impending domination. That initial audition impressed Rogers so much that he spent the next year helping Rihanna sharpen her craft in Stamford, Conn. during her breaks from school. In 2004, she signed to Roger’s and Carl Sturken’s Syndicated Rhythm Productions, allowing her four-track demo tape – which included an early cut of “Pon De Replay” from her then-unreleased debut studio album – to begin circulating. 

Upon hearing “Pon De Replay” for the first time, Jay-Z, Def Jam’s president and CEO at the time, felt that track was too big to be a new artist’s first single. But after hearing her sing the song live during an audition in NYC, he was convinced and honored L.A Reid’s request to make sure Rihanna didn’t leave the building without signing a deal with Def Jam. In a 2005 appearance on The Tyra Banks Show, Rihanna recalled Jay-Z saying, “There are two ways to leave here. I go through the door with the deal signed or through this window, and we’re on the 29th floor.” That day, Jay-Z locked down a six-album deal with Rihanna that would go on to completely revolutionize the pace of modern pop music production and the expectations fans have with how often their favorite artist’s release music.  

With “Replay,” Rihanna introduced herself in 2005 as the girl next door with an island twist. Her sweet, flirtatious vocal tone and casual exchanges with the DJ kept her in lockstep with top 40’s proclivity for the dancefloor, but she did all of it over a handclap-laden, dancehall-lite beat that recalled Skatta’s “Coolie Dance” riddim, which owned pop radio the year prior. A no-brainer pick for her debut album’s lead single, “Pon De Replay” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100; Music of the Sun, its parent album, would debut No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and spawn the follow-up single “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want” (No. 36), announcing Rihanna as one of pop’s most promising newcomers, but not doing enough to fully convince the world that she’d be in it for the long haul. Though “Pon De Replay” was a verifiable success, Teairra Mari was still the “Princess of the Roc” at the time, and more of a priority for Def Jam. 

Exactly six months after the release of “If It’s Lovin’,” Rihanna obliterated the one-hit wonder allegations and unleashed “SOS” as the lead single for her sophomore effort, 2006’s A Girl Like Me. “SOS” became her first Hot 100 No. 1, clearing a path for the set’s future top 10 hits “Unfaithful” (No. 6) and “Break It Off” (No. 9, with Sean Paul). While A Girl Like Me, which reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200, didn’t mark the stark change in image and sound that we’d later come to expect from a new Rihanna album release – after all, she was still cementing her spot in the pop ecosystem – it did help transform her into a pop girl who could spin hits out of dance-pop and R&B as easily as she could with more Caribbean-adjacent styles.   

If A Girl Like Me established Rihanna as bonafide pop princess, then 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad solidified her as a capital-P, capital-S Pop Star. Every great pop star has an album or series of albums that demarcates exactly when they’ve transformed into a new animal. For Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad was that album– an aptly titled pop&B record that transposed the spunky, rebellious energy of her new shaggy, jet-black bob into a sleek collection of tentpole pop singles that housed some of the stickiest hooks of the late ‘00s. Led by the utterly enormous “Umbrella” — the 2007 Jay-Z collaboration (their first of many!) that topped the Hot 100 and earned her her first Grammy — Good Girl Gone Bad soundtracked the birth of Rihanna as a truly singular pop singer. Its eye-grabbing accompanying music video – who can forget that umbrella choreography?! — also helped establish Rihanna’s penchant for aesthetically rich visuals and won her first Moonperson for video of the year the MTV Video Music Awards. 

As would be the case with many of her singles, “Umbrella” embarked on quite the journey — including stints in Britney Spears’ and Mary J. Blige’s camps – before landing in Rihanna’s hands. “When she recorded the ‘ellas’ [in the hook], you knew it was about to be the jump-off,” “Umbrella” songwriter and producer Christopher “Tricky” Stewart told MTV News in 2008. “[You knew] your life was about change if you had anything to do with that record.” With her Bajan lilt evolving into a de facto Riri idiosyncrasy, Rihanna’s delivery single-handedly turned the last two syllables of the word “Umbrella” into one of the most unforgettable refrains in pop history. She made the song her own in a way that even those other legends probably wouldn’t have been able to. With “Umbrella,” Rihanna became the strongest producer of rap/sung collaborations since Mariah Carey effectively pioneered them with 1995’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard-assisted “Fantasy” remix; to date, five of Rihanna’s nine Grammy wins are for best rap/sung performance. 

In addition to “Umbrella,” Good Girl Gone Bad birthed hits in “Shut Up and Drive” (No. 15) and the No. 3-peaking, MJ-sampling “Don’t Stop the Music.” Rih also visited the top 10 with “Hate That I Love You” (No. 7), a duet with Ne-Yo, another pop&B Def Jam labelmate seeing success under Jay-Z’s guidance. In 2008, Rihanna revamped Good Girl Gone Bad with a deluxe edition that tacked on the Grammy-nominated Maroon 5 collaboration “If I Never See Your Face Again” (No. 51), a Halloween anthem in “Disturbia” (No. 1, two weeks) and “Take A Bow,” her first Hot 100-topping ballad. After barely scraping more than one hit off her sophomore LP, Rihanna had morphed into a pop music behemoth by her third album. To close out the year, she joined forces with T.I. for “Live Your Life,” which spent six weeks atop the Hot 100. Outside of the music, the Good Girl Gone Bad era also helped position Rihanna as the fashion icon and sex symbol she remains today; her edgy bob (she finally deaded those pesky Beyoncé comparisons) and seductive stage show shredded the girlish image of her first two albums and properly cast her as an adult pop star. 

Rihanna

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

The night of the 51st Grammy Awards (Feb. 8, 2009) – where she earned three nods for the deluxe edition of Good Girl Gone Bad – was supposed to be a victory lap moment for Rihanna. But the pop superstar ended up canceling her scheduled performance. Initial reports claimed her then-boyfriend Chris Brown – one of the few teen-pop stars on Rih’s level at the time — had physically assaulted her. By March 5, Brown was charged with assault and making criminal threats. 

It’s hard to overstate just how deeply this incident rocked the world. Here were two of music’s biggest and brightest young stars – essentially America’s pop&B sweethearts — at the center of harrowing public example of intimate partner violence (IPV) – a haunting echo of the experiences Rihanna described of growing up witnessing her father physically abusing her mother. Just weeks after closing out an incredibly dominant year in music, Rihanna was cast by some fans and members of the media as the villain and endlessly harassed by those who felt Brown did nothing wrong. Two weeks after the incident, TMZ published an unauthorized photo of a battered and bruised Rihanna that appeared to have been leaked from the Los Angeles police department, effectively changing the public’s relationship to celebrity survivors of IPV forever.  

Those photos circulated cable news stations and gossip blogs alike, with any and everyone clamoring for access to jeer at Rihanna while she was at her lowest. This phenomenon even spurred the proposal of “Rihanna’s Law” — which, if enacted, would have discouraged law enforcement employees from releasing photos or information that exploits victims. By June, Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault, and he received five years of probation and an order to stay 50 yards away from Rihanna barring public events. Brown and Rihanna would reconcile both romantically and musically a few years down the line, but their reunions would always be met with some degree of discomfort, disapproval and confusion. 

By August, Rihanna would return to music alongside Kanye West and Jay-Z with “Run This Town” (No. 2), which won a pair of Grammys and served as her first post-assault release. Meanwhile, the events and subsequent chaos of the 2009 Grammys loomed large over Rihanna’s next release, Rated R, her fourth studio album. Led by the somber “Russian Roulette,” Rihanna processed the emotional trauma of the preceding months and the demise of her and Brown’s relationship through rock-infused ruminations on love, lust, loss, violence, longing and how all of those different energies intersect. Her commanding tone took on a more militant vibe that was reflected in music videos like the clip for her Jeezy-assisted “Hard,” while her fashion became even more punk-influenced, exacerbating the album’s overall grayscale bleakness.  

Both “Russian Roulette” (No. 9) and “Hard” (No. 8) reached the Hot 100’s top 10, but Rated R’s sole No. 1 hit, “Rude Boy,” found Rihanna returning to the dancehall influences that she first captured America’s attention with. Perhaps one of her most important Hot 100 chart-toppers, “Rude Boy” marked the moment Rihanna committed to a truly unapologetic embrace of her sexuality – a daring, provocative and admirable choice in an era where most expected her to dial down her forwardness following Brown’s assault. Rihanna’s decision to double down on owning and flaunting her sexuality in spite of the patriarchy’s attempts to silence and conceal her became paramount to her brand going forward. The more she stood firm in her expression of her sexuality, the more loved, hated and influential she became. But she outwardly rejected the “role model” label – and would continue to throughout her career – making her pop’s favorite rebel and one of celebrity’s greatest challengers. 

Before Taylor Swift (Folklore and Evermore) and Ariana Grande (Sweetener and thank u, next) were putting out “sister albums” in quick succession, Rihanna was doing it with Rated R and Loud. Released just three and half months after the final Rated R single (“Te Amo”), Loud traded Riri’s heavy eyeliner and highlight-streaked bowl cuts for fire-engine red curls and a bold red lip. Musically, buoyant dance-pop and explosive love-centric choruses took the place of Rated R’s penchant for foreboding rock ‘n’ roll. Returning to the commercial glory of Good Girl Gone Bad, Loud launched three Hot 100 chart-toppers: “Only Girl (In The World),” “What’s My Name” (with Drake) and “S&M,” with Britney Spears’ much-hyped remix appearance pushing the song over the top. (Fascinatingly, “Only Girl” remains the only solo Rihanna song to ever win a Grammy, for best dance recording.)  

Across Loud — which earned four Grammy nominations, including album of the year – Rihanna added much-needed levity and verve to the artistic strides she made on Rated R. She dialed up her embrace of her sexuality to 100 – live performances of “S&M” sparked concern for producers at both the 2011 Brits and Billboard Music Awards – while beloved cuts like “Man Down” continued Rated R’s exploration of vengeance and loving things that may not always be good for you. In addition to its bevy of hits, Loud also spawned a tour of the same name that saw Rihanna performing at London’s iconic O2 arena for a whopping 10 dates. As pop entered the 2010s, that Rihanna reign had indeed not let up. Such was the magic of Rihanna’s yearly album releases, she offset her near-constant presence with radically different sounds and looks, making her a chameleon, always a step or two ahead of where pop music was at a given time. 

To bridge Rated R and Loud, Rihanna linked up with Eminem for “Love the Way You Lie,” a haunting rap ballad that topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks during the summer of 2010 and earned five Grammy nominations. Inspired by her own experiences in an abusive relationship, Skylar Grey penned the track’s chorus for Alex da Kid’s demo before Eminem heard it and specifically asked Rihanna to hop on it. Both Rihanna and Eminem have had public stints in abusive relationships – albeit on different sides of the equation – so their real-life experiences infused the song’s exploration of the IPV cycle with stunning gravitas. (She made another cameo on another similarly themed hit later in the year, with her appearance on Kanye West’s spellbinding and brutal “All of the Lights.”) At once a grueling emotional undertaking and an expertly constructed pop song, “Love the Way You Lie” marked the beginning of a union that would spawn three more collaborations – including 2013’s Grammy-winning Hot 100 chart-topper “The Monster” — and a joint six-date stadium trek in 2014. 

By the time Rihanna dropped Talk That Talk in 2011, top 40 was comfortably in the throes of its love affair with EDM-driven dance-pop. Having already visited similar styles dating back to “SOS,” Rihanna easily and unsurprisingly adapted to Eurodance dominance of the times with “We Found Love,” the era-defining lead single for Talk That Talk. The rousing dance track simultaneously doubled as a thesis for Rihanna’s entire musical career – what’s a Rihanna song without searching for a love in places that should be devoid of it? — and helped further introduce Calvin Harris, who was about to break out with “Feels So Close.”  

With an acclaimed Grammy and VMA-winning music video (she’s the first woman to win video of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards twice), millions of copies sold worldwide and 10 weeks atop the Hot 100, “We Found Love” is arguably the defining song of Rihanna’s career. Just as her commanding voice developed a militant edge for Rated R, Rihanna morphed her voice into something closer to the anthem-belting house divas of the ‘90s with a robust, joyful timbre. When she slips into her falsetto each time she sings the word “hopeless,” effortlessly capturing the whimsy of the Harris’ blaring synths, that’s the stuff pop greatness is made of. “We Found Love” was so massive and so undeniably great that everyone wanted to be part of its lore; both Leona Lewis and Nicole Scherzinger claimed to have had the song before Rihanna, a testament to Riri’s evolution from perusing other pop stars’ scraps to being the biggest get in the world for a pop songwriter. 

Talk That Talk reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and spawned five additional singles: “Where Have You Been” (No. 5), “You Da One” (No. 14), “Talk That Talk” (No. 31, with Jay-Z), “Birthday Cake” (No. 24, with Chris Brown) and “Cockiness,” which did not reach the Hot 100 but did earn a remix with A$AP Rocky, the future father of Rih’s two sons who also performed a notably frisky, booty-grabbing rendition of the track with Rih at the 2012 VMAs. While some critics derided the album’s overt preoccupation with sexual themes, Talk That Talk reiterated Rihanna’s position as a hit machine who was unafraid to court controversy. 

Rihanna

Simone Joyner/Getty Images

After years of seamlessly shifting in and out of seemingly disparate styles and looks, 2011 and 2012 were the years when it seemed like Rihanna was finally getting recognized for her gifts as a master aesthetic curator in real-time. In simpler terms, everyone wanted to be like Rihanna, and the explosion of the Instagram era put that collective yearning for her specific cool on full display.  

Between her Twitter (now X) clapback era, the Isis chest tattoo, pitch-perfect street style, her black pixie cut and her affinity for blunts and free nipples, Rihanna’s cavalier, mess-with-me-if-you-dare attitude dictated an entire generation’s curation of their own personalities and styles. You couldn’t scroll Instagram without coming across several accounts that were trying to recreate some part of Rihanna’s aesthetic. Whether she was sparring with Ciara or dismissing Kendall Jenner, Rihanna was pop’s favorite mean girl during this time, Regina George be damned. (2012 was also the year of Rih’s acting debut – Peter Berg’s critical and commercial stinker Battleship; a more successful foray into live-action film would come in 2018 with Gary Ross’ $300 million-grossing Ocean’s 8.) 

Less than a month after “Cockiness” closed the Talk That Talk era, Rihanna launched the Sia-penned “Diamonds” as the lead single for Unapologetic, her seventh studio album. Though “Diamonds” slowed down the tempos of her previous records, the soaring ballad wasn’t entirely representative of its parent album’s high-octane combination of trap, reggae, R&B and dance-pop. The rest of the album’s singles – including “Stay” (No. 3, with Mikky Ekko) and “Pour It Up” (No. 19), “Right Now” (No. 50, with David Guetta) and “What Now” (No. 25) — all reached the Hot 100.  

Both her first album to top the Billboard 200 and win a Grammy (best urban contemporary album), Unapologetic is – in quite a few ways – an unofficial sequel to Good Girl Gone Bad. Not only did Rihanna spend the set feeding her cross-genre inclinations, but she also infused her songwriting and themes with the high drama of celebrity; anxiety-wracked tracks like “Get It Over With” complemented more jaw-dropping moments like “Nobody’s Business,” an unsubtle Brown duet that explicitly winks, nods and scoffs at the expected, horrified reactions to the two ex-lovers’ reunion. Aided by a nifty mixture of hip-hop/R&B samples and an all-star roster of songwriters and producers, Unapologetic, for many, remains Riri’s magnum opus. 

Before Rihanna got to 2016’s Anti – the other album most frequently considered her masterpiece – she spent some time completing side quests and getting a little weird. She commenced 2014 with “Can’t Remember to Forget You” — an underrated Shakira duet – and a planned break from music. After spending summer 2014 on tour with Eminem, Rihanna wouldn’t return with new music until the very beginning of the next year. At the top of 2015, she recruited West and Paul McCartney for “FourFiveSeconds,” a folksy acoustic pop ditty that peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100 and signaled a massive shift from digitized soundscapes of Unapologetic. Rambunctious trap banger “Bitch Better Have My Money” arrived in March, reaching No. 15 on the Hot 100, with a cinematic, Mads Mikkelsen-starring music video that played into the theory that song was (at least partially) inspired by the former accountants Riri sued in 2012. Finally, the American Dream-exalting “American Oxygen” (No. 78) arrived in April with an accompanying patriotic music video; the dubstep ballad would unwittingly herald President-Elect Donald Trump’s arrival in the U.S. political arena two months later. 

Despite each of the three singles earning critical acclaim, none of them ended up attached to a larger project, and details on what would eventually be known as Anti remained muddied. In fact, the only musical project Rihanna released in 2015 was Home, a tepidly received companion soundtrack to the children’s animated film she starred in that year. While she cooled off on the music side, this is when Rihanna truly started to make strides in the fashion world beyond her capacity as a pop star; she was appointed creative director of Puma in 2014 and expanded her fragrance line to men’s scents that same year. By this point, Rihanna was a MET Gala regular, but her 2015 appearance in Chinese designer Guo Pei’s dramatic yellow gown cemented her as the undisputed queen of the fashion event. Easily the most-memed MET Gala fashion moment of all time, Rihanna’s regal pose and eye-popping train once again reminded us of her ability to dominate the news cycle with a single garment – just as she did with her sheer, Swarovski crystal-encrusted gown at the 2014 CFDA Awards, where she was honored with the Fashion Icon award. 

In late 2015, Roc Nation successfully orchestrated a deal with Samsung to sponsor the rollout and tour for Rihanna’s forthcoming album. The album in question, of course, was Anti. That deal gave way to “AntiDiary” — a series of digital and in-person activations that brought fans inside the world of the album. Ultimately, the “AntiDiary” endeavor fell flat, with its accompanying visuals uninterestingly reflecting on past Rihanna eras in anticipation for the one on the way. Plagued by a start-stop creative process, the looming shadows of Samsung and Tidal, West dropping out as executive producer and an eleventh-hour leak, Anti finally arrived on Jan. 28, 2016. The Hot 100-topping, Drake-assisted “Work” preceded the album by a day, and the full set was accidentally uploaded prematurely to TIDAL, through which one million copies of the album were available for free download via Samsung. Due to its messy release, Anti earned a meager No. 27 debut before peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 after its first full week of release.  

Despite the extremely messy rollout, the album ended up being a resounding success. Nominated for six Grammys, Anti harnessed the emotional turmoil and faith-based crises of Rihanna’s post-Unapologetic years into a liberating journey through soul, hip-hop, folk, trap, dancehall and more. Though the Prince-evoking “Kiss It Better” topped out at No. 62, two more Anti singles joined “Work” in the Hot 100’s top 10: the doo-wop-infused “Love on the Brain” (No. 5) and “Needed Me” (No. 7), a continuation of the murderous path she first ventured on with “Man Down” that doubles as the longest-running Hot 100 entry of her career (45 weeks).  

With Anti, Rihanna reached levels of artistic triumph that she had never previously seen. From the Dido-nodding “Never Ending” to a beloved cover of Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” Anti fearlessly flaunted the full breadth of Rihanna’s musical influences and interests. For the first time since Rated R – maybe ever – people were lauding a Rihanna album as a musical and artistic statement, not just an impressive hodgepodge of hit singles. Despite its rocky start and the Grammys’ cold shoulder, Anti remains on the Billboard 200 today, now the longest-running album by a Black woman in the chart’s history (445 weeks and counting). 

While the business side of things may have been hectic, 2015-16 housed some of Rihanna’s best and most defining performances. In addition to her routinely lauded career-spanning medleys at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards – where she was honored with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and hilariously curved a kiss from Drake on national television – Rih also shut down the 2016 Brits with SZA and Drizzy, made a green fur coat and an onstage helicopter nothing short of iconic with her 2015 iHeartRadio Music Awards performance and brought the 2016 BBMAs crowd to tears with an impassioned rendition of “Love on the Brain.” Rihanna’s stage show has never been the single most vital part of her artistry, but she certainly found her pocket in this era – probably because the songs finally sounded the most like what Rihanna wants to make versus how other cooks think her music should sound. That level of artistic maturation after already debuting with such a keen eye and ear is what made – and continues to make – Rihanna such an outstanding and alluring pop star.  

Outisde of her own music, Rihanna spent the rest of 2016 and 2017 pumping out collaborations. In retrospect, she was probably giving the world as much music as she could before she shifted her focus to her growing business empire – but at the time, it just felt like Rih was meeting the public’s bottomless demand for more of her, as 2016 spawned more Rih-assisted hits for West (“Famous”), Harris (“This Is What You Came For”) and Drake (“Too Good”), while the following year found her linking up with N.E.R.D. (“Lemon”), Future (“Selfish”), Kendrick Lamar (“Loyalty”) and DJ Khaled and Bryson Tiller (“Wild Thoughts”). 

With the launch of Fenty Beauty in 2017, Rihanna effectively quiet-quit pop stardom – kind of. The makeup brand continues to be a resounding success, cementing Rihanna as a pioneer in beauty industry inclusivity and a powerhouse brand across mediums and disciplines. She has since launched skincare (Fenty Skin) and healthcare (Fenty Hair) offshoots for the brand. In 2018, she debuted Savage x Fenty, a lingerie brand whose annual fashion show quickly became a worthy competitor to the iconic Victoria’s Secret fashion show. By 2019, she launched the now-closed Fenty fashion brand under luxury goods company LVMH, which made her both the first woman to create an original brand for LVMH and the first woman of color to lead an LVMH brand. Of course, these business strides came years after she teamed up with Puma for products like the “Creeper” sneaker, which allowed fans an avenue to literally buy Rihanna’s swag for themselves. 

Rihanna

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The last five years or so of Rihanna’s career have seen more personal developments than musical ones. Currently in domestic bliss with longtime beau A$AP Rocky and their two sons, RZA, 2, and Riot, 1, Riri has popped back into music for two major moments since the turn of the decade. In 2022, she contributed two original songs to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack: “Born Again” and “Lift Me Up,” a moving tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman that peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 and earned Academy Award and Grammy nominations. The following year, she reversed her Colin Kaepernick-inspired NFL boycott and headlined the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show. She played hits from across her career, cheekily promoted Fenty Beauty, and revealed a then-unannounced pregnancy in one fell swoop, earning two Emmys and the most-watched halftime show in history (121.017 million viewers). 

With 14 Hot 100 No. 1 hits (the most chart-toppers of any artist this century), two Billboard 200 No. 1 albums, nine Grammys, an endlessly imitated voice and a single name that can make virtually any door open from music to cosmetics to fashion, becoming the “Black Madonna” is comfortably in Rihanna’s rearview mirror. She’s something arguably even more awe-inspiring: a Black Caribbean immigrant woman whose talent, grit and inimitable charisma made her one of the important and successful pop singers in history. She’s Rihanna – there are tens of hundreds of pop stars out there eager to put a modifier in front of her name and fashion her blueprint into something of their own. 

Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — find our accompanying podcast deep dives and ranking explanations here — and be sure to check back next Tuesday (Nov. 26) as we reveal our No. 2, before unveiling our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star on Dec. 3!

THE LIST SO FAR:

Honorable Mentions

25. Katy Perry24. Ed Sheeran23. Bad Bunny22. One Direction21. Lil Wayne20. Bruno Mars19. BTS18. The Weeknd17. Shakira16. Jay-Z15. Miley Cyrus14. Justin Timberlake13. Nicki Minaj12. Eminem11. Usher10. Adele9. Ariana Grande8. Justin Bieber7. Kanye West6. Britney Spears5. Lady Gaga4. Drake3. Rihanna

With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard is spending the next few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here — and now, we examine the century in Lady Gaga, a game-changing phenomenon whose peerless opening run continues to loom large in contemporary pop music. (Hear more discussion of Gaga and explanation of her list ranking on our Greatest Pop Stars podcast, with the new episode debuting Nov. 6.)

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When considering the entirety of pop star greatness across the first 25 years of this century, there might not be a more iconic sound than these five nonsensical syllables: “Rahhh, rahhh, ah-ah-ahhh!”

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Behold “Bad Romance,” pop perfection incarnate. There’s that earworm refrain, followed by formidably declarative verses, a powder keg of a chorus and a high-concept bridge. There’s the collection of raved-out synths, and the voice that met their harshness with beauty and command. There’s the music video — still perhaps the greatest of the 21st century so far — full of bathhouse coffins, exploding beds, disorienting contact lenses and bewitching dance moves. There were the TV performances, which ranged from piano-medley stately to nude-bodysuit, alien-mask outrageous. It all elevated contemporary pop — clock the French phrases before the final chorus, or the body horror and feminist fury of its video — without looking down on it, or veering too far away from its most immediate pleasures.

Every millimeter of Lady Gaga’s 2009 single, and how it was presented to the world, stood out as special — burned into the memory of any pop fan paying the slightest bit of attention 15 years ago, and largely remaining so today. “Bad Romance” was not Gaga’s first hit, her biggest hit, and it’s not her most-streamed song today. Yet a moment like “Bad Romance” – one that capped a year of increasingly massive moments, in one of the most unforgettable breakout runs in pop music history – is the reason why Lady Gaga is so indispensable to the modern pop landscape, an audacious superstar who can stun, thrill, bewilder and satisfy in the span of one radio-ready single.

Such is the power of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, who has spent her career holding up fragile ideas of modern pop stardom and vigorously shaking them like a snow globe. Lady Gaga started off as an overnight sensation, then maintained that superstardom as pop’s center of gravity for the next few years -– before an inevitable comedown period, a fascinating reinvention (or three), and a return to music’s forefront that sees Gaga remaining one of its top hitmakers and headliners today.

Once her hits multiplied, she switched up her electro-pop aesthetic, diving into classic rock, country and the great American songbook; she has made philanthropy and LGBTQ+ rights a core part of her professional identity; and she is the only person on the planet who has been nominated for a best actress Oscar and headlined a Super Bowl halftime show. She has kept us on our toes for 15 years, reinventing what a modern pop star can achieve, while also delivering banger after banger.

Lady Gaga

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Lady Gaga

FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images

That run began with “Just Dance,” which catapulted the native of New York’s Upper West Side — a musical prodigy and theater kid who landed a role as an extra on The Sopranos a few years before attending NYU — onto top 40 radio with her first single as a solo artist. Adopting her moniker from the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga” after dropping out of college, she kicked around the industry for a few years, playing NYC club gigs and writing for other artists — but ‘00s pop and R&B hitmaker Akon took a shine to Lady Gaga, signed her to his KonLive imprint through Interscope, and co-wrote “Just Dance” with Gaga and a rising producer named RedOne.

Before turbo-pop took off at the beginning of the 2010s by enmeshing top 40 with EDM music, Gaga’s glammed-up synth-pop anthem captured the feeling of being bleary-eyed at the club but dancing to your favorite song anyway. “Just Dance” (which featured another Akon protege, Colby O’Donis) was a bright, ultra-catchy entry point for Gaga, spending three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in early 2009 and introducing her as a striking new star, a lightning bolt painted on her cheek in its music video. The song — which almost ended up with The Pussycat Dolls or Gwen Stefani before Gaga claimed it as her own — may have downplayed her audacious personality for sake of accessibility, but “Just Dance” was a spiked-toe boot in the door.

With “Poker Face,” the follow-up single that followed it to the Hot 100’s summit a few months later, Gaga kicked that door wide open. The song was another club-ready electro-pop jam, but contained far more Gaga fingerprints, from the murmured “Muh-muh-muh-MA!” refrain, to the steely cool of the verses, to the big-voiced chorus, to the “I’m bluffin’ with my muffin!” winks. Its music video began with a cracked disco ball fashioned into a mask covering Gaga’s eyes, stepping out of a pool in slow motion as lightning crackles in the sky behind her; it’s a superhero’s entrance, and it helped establish Gaga as a striking visual artist, worthy of peak-MTV greatness and ready to dominate in the YouTube era.

Those two smashes kicked off one of the finest imperial eras in modern pop stardom: The Fame, Lady Gaga’s 2008 debut album, became a juggernaut through 2009, as follow-up singles like “LoveGame” and “Paparazzi” streaked into the top 10. The hits showcased different sides of Gaga’s aesthetic: while the “LoveGame” music video placed her sexuality front and center as Gaga kissed men and women, “Paparazzi” received an extended visual fantasia, commenting on the trappings of fame while exacting vengeance on a murderous lover, played by Alexander Skarsgård. 

As they started to take off on the charts, Gaga went on a run of jaw-dropping primetime performances: most memorably at the 2009 VMAs, where fake blood dripped down Gaga’s torso as she belted out “Paparazzi,” eliciting gasps from the audience. At the start of the 2010 Grammys, where The Fame was nominated for album of the year, Gaga played “Poker Face” as a heart-wrenching ballad, before surprise guest Elton John came out to perform his classic “Your Song” and her own ballad “Speechless.” Just like that, the most audacious pop performer of his generation had seemingly blessed the new torchbearer.

Every new Gaga single from The Fame hit with force, every new music video created an eye-popping ecosystem, every awards performance became must-see TV – and the artist in the eye of the hurricane started to look like a generational talent. Then, Lady Gaga decided to do the best thing she could at the end of The Fame era: she extended it. The Fame Monster, an eight-song project bundled with the rest of its predecessor that was released in time for the 2009 holidays, sent her even higher into pop’s stratosphere – first with “Bad Romance,” then the breathless Beyoncé team-up “Telephone” and finally the Europop opus “Alejandro,” which all hit the top 10 and added to her cultural ubiquity. The “Telephone” music video – a nine-minute, revenge-fueled Tarantino riff co-starring Gaga and Bey – was the type of pop culture event that was seldom seen in a post-TRL pop landscape.

The Fame Monster may have existed as a precursor to the modern deluxe edition of an album, but those singles proved so vital that it followed The Fame to an album of the year Grammy nom the following year. Meanwhile, the project also set up Gaga’s first arena headlining shows as part of the Monster Ball tour, which kicked off one week after the release of The Fame Monster and emerged from the ashes of a failed co-headlining tour with Kanye West. No matter: Gaga got to dazzle in front of her ever-growing fan base, the Little Monsters, and after opening the tour with theater dates, the Monster Ball eventually grew big enough to produce an HBO special filmed at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The fact that Lady Gaga kept making headlines as her first proper era started to wind down — at the 2010 VMAs, for instance, she won Video of the Year while rocking the immediately iconic “meat dress” — heightened expectations for her follow-up to an unfathomable level. Gaga’s rise was meteoric; how could she possibly top it, now working with a much bigger budget and impossible clout? 

Born This Way, released in 2011, brandished its flashier pedigree in spots, with E Street Band sax-man Clarence Clemons and Queen guitarist Brian May listed among the liner notes. But the album’s mix of empowering dance-pop and bombastic arena rock was unquestionably Gaga’s brainchild — no one else made the decision to place her head at the front of a motorcycle on the album cover. The title track’s whirring percussion and synth throb was overshadowed by its message of self-acceptance, explicitly aimed at the LGBTQ+ community (“Don’t be a drag, just be a queen,” goes the most quotable line), and i tmade history as the 1,000th song to top the Hot 100 when it debuted at No. 1 in February 2011 — becoming the first chart-topper to include the word “transgender” in its lyrics.

The rest of the Born This Way era was a bit bumpier than the all-killer-no-filler Gaga run that preceded it: though it was an immediate smash, the title track never escaped accusations that it sounded too similar to Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” with both artists asked about the melodic callback throughout 2011 and sharing different POVs on what was and was not re-created. And the singles that followed “Born This Way” — the thumping RedOne reunion “Judas”; the lungs-deflating rock anthem “The Edge of Glory”; the country-tinged, Mutt Lange-helmed “Yoü and I,” which introduced Jo Calderone, Gaga’s male alter ego-as-performance art — were all top 10 Hot 100 hits, but not quite with the radio-rupturing magnitude of her Fame singles. Yet at this point, Gaga was too big to fail: Born This Way bowed with 1.1 million copies sold in its first week, which easily remains the best mark of her career — although Amazon offering the full album as a 99-cent download during its release week ultimately placed something of an asterisk next to those seven figures in the view of some onlookers.

If cracks in the foundation of Gaga’s superstardom started to show over the course of the Born This Way campaign, its 2013 follow-up Artpop was a full-blown sinkhole. Dreamed up as a multimedia compound of fine art and modern pop, Artpop was rolled out with “the world’s first flying dress,” named the Volantis; new works by renowned artists like Jeff Koons (who created a statue of Gaga for the album cover), Marina Abramović and Robert Wilson, among others; and an app that let fans create their own pieces of artwork while chatting about the new album. Oh yeah, the album: It was a re-imagining of Gaga’s synth-pop beginnings – with lead single “Applause” serving as an EDM-adjacent commentary on performing on the world’s grandest stages – but also included forays into hip-hop (“Jewels n’ Drugs,” with T.I., Too Short and Twista), glam rock (“Venus”) and industrial (“Swine”).

Artpop remains a fascinating mishmash of styles and messages, and “Applause” became another top 10 hit, but the album underperformed relative to Gaga’s track record, was derided as a flop, and generally confused a public that was hungry for more groundbreaking songs and videos. A decade later, even the album’s cult following still can’t figure out what the heck the flying dress had to do with anything.  Worst of all, second single “Do What U Want” co-starred R. Kelly as Gaga’s duet partner — released years prior to the R&B star’s conviction on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, but around the time that allegations had begun to resurface. Upon Kelly’s 2019 arrest, Gaga removed “Do What U Want” from streaming services, a moral stain wiped away from a misfire.

Following Artpop, Lady Gaga needed a reset — and she turned to an unexpected source. Tony Bennett was 88 years old when Cheek to Cheek, an album of jazz-standard duets with Gaga, was released in September 2014, an industry legend who sounded as warm and charming in the studio as ever; meanwhile, Gaga could showcase the potent vocals that had distinguished her as a theater student but had been masked by artifice on Artpop. 

Cheek to Cheek was a surprise hit, bringing Gershwin and Porter songs to the top of the Billboard 200 decades after their deaths; Gaga’s mojo had been slightly regained, but more importantly, her creative partnership and personal friendship with Bennett blossomed. When they re-teamed for another set, Love for Sale, in 2021, the pair earned an album of the year Grammy nomination, Bennett’s final such nod before his 2023 passing at the age of 96.

Lady Gaga

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation

The reinvention that Cheek to Cheek represented coincided with Gaga taking some time away from album-campaign mode and delving into other interests. She dabbled in Hollywood projects like Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and American Horror Story, and became an ambassador for a Versace campaign. At the 2015 Academy Awards, Gaga earned a standing ovation for belting out a medley from The Sound of Music — and at the following year’s Oscars, she was a nominee for best original song, for the harrowing “Til It Happens to You” from the campus rape documentary The Hunting Ground. As more time elapsed from Artpop, Gaga reminded the world that she was a captivating visual performer and gifted vocalist; the comeback narrative was ripe for the taking.

Joanne, Gaga’s 2016 album, was named after her late aunt, and featured Gaga looking up into a cowboy hat on its cover. As such, the full-length was more personal than Artpop and boasted a country undercurrent, with nods toward classic rock and Americana akin to Born This Way. Gaga had moved into a different phase of her career as a hitmaker by this point — “Perfect Illusion,” the album’s sneakily excellent dance-rock lead single co-produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, received a splashy rollout, but peaked only at No. 15 on the Hot 100, and its parent album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 but drew mixed reviews. Yet Gaga’s return to the spotlight was in part presented as a legacy artist with a bulletproof back catalog, thanks in part to something that took place four months after Joanne: the Super Bowl.

Although Gaga’s halftime performance on Feb. 5, 2017 was not the politically barbed showcase that some expected following the election of Donald Trump a few months prior, her show was both visually dazzling (beginning with a dive from the rooftop of Houston’s NRG Stadium) and culturally impactful (performing “Born This Way” on the biggest stage in the world was a raised fist in support of the LGBTQ+ community). And the Super Bowl halftime show also partially redeemed the commercial legacy of Joanne: “Million Reasons,” the album’s piano-led power ballad, was given a prime slot in the set list, and belatedly reached No. 4 on the Hot 100.

The success of “Million Reasons” unwittingly served as the blueprint for an even bigger hit the following year. After spending the rest of 2017 touring the world behind Joanne (including a headlining slot at Coachella, swooping in to replace a pregnant Beyoncé atop the bill), Gaga devoted 2018 to her first Hollywood starring role, in Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star is Born. After spot acting roles in the 2010s, Gaga was given ample room to emote and bewitch as Ally, a struggling singer-songwriter who begins a wind-swept romance with Cooper’s country-rock A-lister, Jackson Maine.

A Star is Born became a box office smash and meme-spawning pop culture phenomenon that earned Gaga an Oscar nomination for best actress, cementing the pop superstar as a Hollywood headliner. Yet for longtime fans of her music, the film’s original soundtrack was the true payoff from the project, with plenty of heartfelt torch songs and eye-watering balladry across a track list that Gaga helmed with producers like Dave Cobb and Lukas Nelson, and artists like Mark Ronson and Jason Isbell. Most importantly, the film and soundtrack contained a centerpiece song that lived up to its placement.

“Shallow,” a duet between Gaga and Cooper posited in Star as the song that solidifies their characters’ bond forever, harnessed Gaga’s pop power for a country-rock sing-along, recalling the sweep of “Million Reasons” and heightening the drama tenfold. “Shallow” transcended A Star is Born to become a pop hit in its own right — and after Gaga and Cooper performed the duet at the Academy Awards, where “Shallow” won the best original song trophy, the song zoomed to the top of the Hot 100, the general population embracing a special moment at the awards ceremony. Years after dazzling in primetime by covering herself in fake blood, Gaga had graced the Oscars stage with utmost elegance, capable of evolving her talents and becoming a stately pop spokeswoman.

At this point, Gaga was squarely in her thirties and with nothing left to prove as a commercial star — yet it had simply been too long since she had unleashed any radio-ready bangers. Chromatica, her 2020 album that represented a return to unabashedly hooky electro-pop, was released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and acted as a balm for pop fans during a difficult moment in the world.

Although Chromatica recalled elements of The Fame and The Fame Monster sonically and lyrically, with lead single “Stupid Love” built around ecstatic electronic squeals and “Sour Candy” (featuring K-pop girl group BLACKPINK) bursting with sexually charged double entendres, the album featured a more mature perspective as it explored themes of healing, overcoming trauma and embracing positivity. “Rain on Me,” Gaga’s house-inspired duet with Ariana Grande, turned into an unexpected rallying cry in quarantine — “I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive/ Rain on me,” goes the chorus — and the song debuted atop the Hot 100, later winning a Grammy for best pop duo/group performance.

More than a decade after her breakthrough, Gaga had successfully returned to the sound where she began, and offered a piece of personal evolution for mass consumption. When lockdown ended, and Little Monsters got to watch Gaga perform “Rain on Me” in stadiums on her Chromatica Ball tour, the moment felt hard-earned, and euphoric.

Lady Gaga

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

If the history of Lady Gaga’s career is any indication, she is never going to stop entertaining, even as that entertainment takes different forms and plays out in different media. Just in the past few months, she co-starred in Joker: Folie à Deux, an R-rated musical where she got to play Harley Quinn; released Harlequin, a surprise “companion album” to the film full of jazz-standard covers; scored a soft-rock smash alongside Bruno Mars with “Die With a Smile,” currently the No. 2 song in the country; and dropped “Disease,” a darkly lit synth-pop single that will lead into a 2025 album. 

There are viewers and listeners in the center of the Venn diagram that those projects form, but Gaga has also demonstrated an ability to cater to different audiences by allowing her creativity to roam free. She’s been chasing her muse for 15 years, and whatever she comes up with next, you can bet that she’s going to pour her entire artistic soul into that endeavor, and that a lot of people will wrap their arms around it.

That’s why Lady Gaga has resonated with an entire generation of pop fans, from the longtime Little Monsters to the casual fans who can hum along to more of her hits than they realize, to the new stars like Chappell Roan who are internalizing Gaga’s performance art while existing at pop’s current vanguard. As a breath of fresh air on late 2000s radio, a button-pushing provocateur trying on different sounds, or a leading lady gracing the most prestigious stages or a daring performer commanding audiences of thousands, Lady Gaga has always been authentically herself, and will continue to be that forever – whether making social statements, presenting grand artistic projects, or simply proclaiming, “Rahhh, rahhh, ah-ah-ahhh!”

Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — find our accompanying podcast deep dives and ranking explanations here — and be sure to check back every Tuesday this November as we unveil the rest of our top five, leading up to our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star being revealed on Dec. 3!

THE LIST SO FAR:

Honorable Mentions

25. Katy Perry24. Ed Sheeran23. Bad Bunny22. One Direction21. Lil Wayne20. Bruno Mars19. BTS18. The Weeknd17. Shakira16. Jay-Z15. Miley Cyrus14. Justin Timberlake13. Nicki Minaj12. Eminem11. Usher10. Adele9. Ariana Grande8. Justin Bieber7. Kanye West6. Britney Spears5. Lady Gaga