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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 Taylor Swift, who took pop stardom to places we hadn’t previously thought possible. (Hear more discussion of Taylor Swift and explanation of her list ranking on our Greatest Pop Stars podcast — with her episode debuting Wednesday — and see our recently rebuilt list of the Greatest Pop Star by Year from 1981 to 2023 here.)
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It’s amusing to think back on Taylor Swift at age 17, staring straight into Tim McGraw’s soul at the 2007 ACM Awards while performing her debut single – which just so happened to be named after him.
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Pitchy but spirited, plucky but deeply promising as a songwriter, it was clear that she was bursting at the seams with talent and ambition – fully capable, in theory, of reaching the greatest heights a career in the music business could offer. But the audacity she demonstrated by taking the moniker of one of country’s biggest stars, claiming it for her own release – her first-ever, at that – and serenading him with it in front of all of their peers on live television? That proved she also had the sheer nerve she’d need to actually get there.
Time and time again, that same moxie would propel the Pennsylvania native to previously inconceivable heights, her profile skyrocketing with each album as she stacked up chart records, historic sales numbers and unprecedented Recording Academy recognition. Through honoring all the traits that made her different – her sharp pen, her relatable girl-next-door awkwardness, her hopeless romanticism – and rejecting culture’s previous expectations for female artists to be overtly sexy, pliable and cool, she was able to forcefully, gravitationally bend culture to her will and become one of the world’s biggest undisputed pop stars, despite her eight-year late start in country music.
She is the only person to ever win album of the year at the Grammys four times. She has the second-most Billboard Hot 100 entries of all time (only Drake has more) and ties with Jay-Z for second-most No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 (bested only by The Beatles). She is one of the most impressive touring artists of the past quarter-century, a status that has culminated with her global Eras Tour becoming the highest-grossing trek of all time in 2023, just halfway through its run, as it repeatedly set stadium attendance records and boosted local economies in its confetti-and-friendship-bracelet-strewn wake. She’s a billionaire, the only female artist to become one predominantly through music alone. She is the most famous woman in the world.
And, with all due respect to Tim McGraw, the first thing millions of young pop fans really do think of when they hear his name is Taylor Swift.
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Swift and her fans were both young when they first saw each other, she an angel-faced teenager with corkscrew curls and lofty dreams that spilled over into both songs and MySpace posts, they a pack of mostly adolescent girls who pored over her interviews, replayed her vlogs long before “vlogging” was even a thing and started picking up guitars at higher rates to emulate their beloved heroine. The details of her origin story are now common bits of trivia — she was born Dec. 13, 1989 to Scott and Andrea Swift, raised on a Christmas tree farm in Wyomissing, and did you know her lucky number is 13? — but they used to make up the sacred web of knowledge held dear by her earliest admirers. To them, the tale of what happened next is also etched into memory like a bible passage: She moved to Nashville as a teenager to pursue a country music career, scored a publishing deal while still a student at Hendersonville High School and later got her big break when Scott Borchetta discovered her at the Bluebird Café and signed her to his infant label Big Machine Records.
In 2006, she dropped her self-titled debut LP through Big Machine and promoted it heavily, embarking on radio tours and hand-packing her own CDs into envelopes to personally send off to stations. She performed constantly — later joining Rascal Flatts, George Strait, Brad Paisley, Faith Hill and, yes, Tim McGraw as an opener on their respective country tours – and she was already demonstrating an instinctual business savvy that’s uncommon in most creatives, let alone ones who are still just 16. As an incentive for fans to buy copies of the record, for instance, she started planting hidden messages in her CD lyric booklets hinting at the real-life inspirations behind her songs, a tradition that would continue on future albums and grow more tantalizing as her subjects became more famous.
The specifics of this era feel fuzzier now that Swift has been ubiquitous for years — especially when, in 2024, modern stars find fame seemingly overnight through the lightning strike of social media virality as opposed to slowly, steadily building their fanbases over time. But her early career was much more of an old-school, brick-by-brick climb up the ranks than we often give her credit for now, fueled by the fact that on Taylor Swift, she was already composing with the skill of an experienced career songwriter who had a particular knack for connecting with young girls – because, well, she still was one herself.
Lead single “Tim McGraw” became Swift’s first entry on the Hot 100 that September, and the following year, the heart-rending “Teardrops on My Guitar” and the maniacally catchy “Our Song” also made their way up the chart. Neither of those would reach their peaks until 2008, though, when fiery breakup bangers “Should’ve Said No” and “Picture to Burn” also entered and became top 40 hits, just in time to capture everyone’s attentions ahead of the release of Fearless in November. She was a darling in the insular world of country music, earning professional recognition from the CMAs and ACMs, but she was becoming a face people recognized in pop culture, too. It was around this time that she was embraced into Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez’s Disney star ranks and briefly dated Joe Jonas, her first of several tabloid-feeding romances that would become central to the way we think and talk about her persona. People were looking – she just needed to stick the landing with her next album.
Again, the magnitude of the entire Fearless era is hard to conceptualize now that Swift has dwarfed herself so many times over the years. But in late 2008, the musician officially exploded into crossover-star status thanks to the staggering success of her sophomore album – which spent an incredible 11 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold 592,000 million copies in its first week. She dominated radio with country-pop smashes that remain classics in her discography to this day – most notably, “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me,” two top five Hot 100 hits with cinematic music videos that inspired some of the most memorable moments in her iconography — and she became the ultimate it-girl, whose face you craned your neck to see on red carpets, talk shows, magazine covers. The very first headlining trek she ever embarked on, the Fearless Tour, was through arenas, and she capped the triumphant era with a headline-grabbing album of the year win at the 2010 Grammys, at that point the youngest artist to ever do so.
The most talked-about moment from the first of Swift’s many imperial phases, though, was none of the above — but you probably already know where this is going. Like Shakespearean foils crossing paths for the first time, Kanye West fatefully thrust himself into the then-19-year-old Swift’s storyline, publicly declaring at the 2009 VMAs that she actually didn’t deserve one of the countless awards she would take home that year and leaving her shellshocked on stage in a moment that would catapult her into the international news cycle for weeks to come. Everyone from Dr. Phil to President Barack Obama had an opinion on the matter, with the latter famously declaring the rapper to be “a jacka–.”
Now, to look at the trajectory Swift was already on up until this point and still argue that the VMAs incident “made [her] famous,” as Ye would later claim, is laughable. But his protests at the show would foreshadow so many others coming for her down the line – namely, questions about her overall worthiness as an awards powerhouse, as debates raged over whether such a young (and female) performer was actually writing her own songs, or merely coasting off the contributions of her older male collaborators.
In response to those criticisms, she would pen the entirety of her 2010 follow-up album, Speak Now, without any outside lyrical help, resulting in a magical 14-track romantic dreamscape that remains a fervent fan-favorite to this day. If Fearless showcased her ability to craft hooky, accessible earworms, her third studio effort introduced her gift for penning deeply personal, woundingly emotional ballads like “Back to December,” “Dear John” and “Last Kiss,” a trade most important to the DNA of Swift’s musical genius.
Though it spent six weeks at No. 1 and helped make Swift Billboard’s then-youngest Woman of the Year, Speak Now didn’t spawn the same level of pop smashes, critical acclaim or Grammy love as its older sister did. When she made 2012’s Red, she seemed determined to make up for its lack of universality, enlisting the help of pop-music godfathers Max Martin and Shellback to push her sound up to the absolute barrier of pop, while staying just country enough to hold onto her identity and keep Big Machine happy. It worked: the deliberately cloying “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” became her first-ever No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, and with numerous top 40 smashes (“I Knew You Were Trouble,” “22” and “Begin Again,” to name a few), the project had double the capacity for hits as Fearless. Slower, more intimate tracks like “The Last Time,” “I Almost Do” and crown jewel “All Too Well” also expanded on the confessional sad-girl oeuvre she’d started with Speak Now, making Red a beautiful hodgepodge of all the best parts of both albums that crystallized what we now recognize as Swift’s greatest contributions to modern music: catchy hooks and heartbreaking ballads.
When Red also failed to take home album of the year at the Grammys, and her self-described “break my heart and I’ll write a song about you” schtick started to be met with antagonism – as Swift later explained, she became a “national lightning rod for slut-shaming” — she once again sought to level up. Breaking almost entirely away from her longtime Nashville collaborators and assembling a top 40 dream team comprised of Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedder and newbie producer Jack Antonoff, the increasingly self-assured artist narrowed her focus on making an unabashed pop album that exploded with energy and shimmering ‘80s synths. She chose singles centered less on boys and more around moving to New York (which she did around that time), feuding with a frenemy (ahem, Katy Perry) and shaking off the haters. It was a colossal success by every metric. Thus began imperial phase no. 2: 1989.
Swift was downright inescapable at this point, with 1989 selling 1.29 million copies in its first week and reigning atop the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks. Her dominion was powered by an impeccable single and music video run, with “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood” all spending time at No. 1 while “Out of the Woods,” “Style” and “Wildest Dreams” held down her rule over radio and department-store speakers for years after the fact. She embarked on her first-ever stadium tour, on which she often brough out guest artists and random famous friends from her #Squad – the innerworkings of which were constantly being dissected by fans and gossip sites alike, both boosting Swift’s fame and narrowing the microscope on her body, style, decisions and personal life. She became Billboard’s first-ever two-time Woman of the Year while making history as the youngest musician to ever take home album of the year at the Grammys twice.
She was Caesar, finally ascending the throne, her ambition and tunnel vision at last giving way to more success than even she could’ve dreamed of. But she hadn’t gotten there with the amount of support and trust she’d hoped from her advisers at Big Machine, who she has insinuated dragged their feet on every step of her country departure. Meanwhile, someone else was preparing to reenter the picture, a sharp knife strapped to his Yeezys.
When public opinion tilted in Ye’s favor following the Great Phone Call Dispute of 2016, Swift responded to the chorus of voices undermining her — fellow celebrities and people behind the scenes included — by hiding away. After a year of self-imposed solitude in London, during which time she fell in love with actor Joe Alwyn, the singer re-emerged in November 2017 with Reputation, one of her most pointed creative risks to date. The dark, theatrical LP found Swift truly reclaiming her narrative and explaining her side of a controversy in detail for the first time in her career, a sharp swerve from her previous method of staying quiet and letting the public decide what she was thinking for her. She would never again be the girl in the silver gown, stunned into silence on the VMAs stage.
Taylor Swift
As soon as her six-album contract was up with Reputation, Swift split from Big Machine and signed with Republic, at the time only hinting at the reason behind her decision: “Incredibly exciting to know that I’ll own all of my master recordings that I make from now on,” she wrote on Instagram. But the signs that she’d been quietly battling her own label for years were there; with 1989, she was open about how hard she’d had to fight Borchetta to let her release a pop album, and on the Reputation Tour, a dedication to Loie Fuller, who “fought for artists to own their own work,” was shown onscreen each night.
By the time the situation exploded with the sale of Big Machine — and with it, her master recordings — to Scooter Braun in 2019, Swift had already turned in Lover. As we’d learn later in her 2020 Netflix film Miss Americana, she felt that, at 29, this project was her last chance to reach audiences on a global scale before she aged out of pop stardom. This fear seemed to lead to her releasing “Me!” — a slightly juvenile and generic pop track that documentary footage would later show she wrote not with the ambition of living up to her own pop genius, but with the quaint goal of little kids singing along — instead of the LP’s clear pop banger, future four-week No. 1 “Cruel Summer,” as its lead single. The most important part of the Lover era to Swift’s overall legacy is that she finally started using her immeasurable influence for political causes after a decade of silence, championing the LGBTQ community through “You Need to Calm Down” and endorsing Tennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen for U.S. senate over Republican opponent Marsha Blackburn.
But when Scootergate happened, a fire was lit under her. She issued scathing response after scathing response, making her fury abundantly clear and quickly publicizing her intention to re-record her first six albums in order to reclaim ownership of her past works. While waiting for the clock to run out on the legal barriers blocking her from doing so before November 2020 – and after the COVID-19 pandemic sidelined her plans for the continuation of the Lover era, including a limited run of performances dubbed “Lover Fest” – she surprise-dropped Folklore and Evermore. Un-muddled by months of pre-release rollout or the need for flashy singles or visual moments, the back-to-back albums reminded the general public that her true gift lies in her storytelling — and thanks in part to an understated acoustic-folk sound assisted by The National’s Aaron Dessner, they made Swift “cool” to an entire audience that had never seen her that way before. In 2021, Folklore gave her a record-tying third AOTY win at the Grammys.
The first piece of imperial phase no. 3 fell into place that April. With the unveiling of her Fearless (Taylor’s Version) re-recording, Swift took her first steps on an escalator that, at the close of the quarter-century, is still going up, sharing a near-exact replica of the album that made her a household name with the additions of never-released songs she wrote and recorded more than 15 years prior. Following that same formula each time, the re-records have only ramped up in cultural significance as they’ve progressed; Red (Taylor’s Version) spawned history’s longest song to go No. 1 with fans’ beloved “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”; Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) outsold its predecessor by 138k units in its first week; and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) became the first re-record to outsell its original counterpart, blowing the already staggering first-week numbers of 2014’s 1989 out of the water with 1.36 million.
The beauty of the re-recordings was that they both allowed longtime fans to relive some of their best memories with Swift while giving newer fans – or simply outsiders who weren’t paying much attention the first time these albums rolled around – a second chance at experiencing her most quintessential eras in real time. But arguably the most shocking part of the process was the fact that, in between the Taylor’s Versions, she was still recording original music. She dropped Midnights in 2022, moving a jaw-dropping 1.58 million first-week units and spawning her longest-running No. 1 hit with “Anti-Hero” — the most honest she’s ever been in her music about her personal demons and incomprehensible station in life — while making chart history, as the first artist to ever simultaneously occupy the entire top 10 of the Hot 100, not to mention winning a record-setting fourth AOTY Grammy.
By the time she embarked on her global Eras Tour, interest in her body of work — old songs and brand new — had never been higher, and like the mirror ball she is, Swift has rewarded fans for it every night on the road with more than three hours’ worth of over-the-top scream-your-face-off catharsis, each show an homage to the painstaking career she’s built, brick by brick, one beautiful, messy era at a time. The unprecedented scale of the tour aligns with the absolutely unfathomable reach she’s achieved in 2023 and onward, her victory lap only continuing with the introductions of boyfriend Travis Kelce to the fairytale – through which she’s also captivated the NFL, proving that no major institution is off limits for her to take over — and the release of 12-week Billboard 200-topper The Tortured Poets Department. The dense 31-track blockbuster LP is second only to Adele’s 25 in highest first-week sales of all time (2.6 million) and has once again swept nominations in every major Grammy category for Swift in 2025, including what could be a record-extending album of the year.
Last year, she was Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 2023, making her the only artist to ever win the title in three separate years (following 2015 and 2021), but the run she’s had in the past biennium isn’t just the grandest of her own career; it’s also possibly the most extraordinary cultural supremacy any of us have ever seen one artist accomplish in our lives. Her decisions, whereabouts and opinions are all considered public domain – you’re out of the loop if you haven’t seen what she wore to the latest Kansas City Chiefs game – and there is no reason to believe that if she dropped another album tomorrow, it wouldn’t invariably end up spending more weeks at No. 1 on the charts than even Tortured Poets, because when hasn’t she been able to top herself? Nothing is out of the realm of possibility for her.
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All of this to say, the star is still outdoing herself, still beating her own unbeatable feats, still forging ahead in the same uncharted direction when most others would’ve long since burned out or jumped ship to alternative career paths – all of which, it shouldn’t go without saying, is exceedingly rare for someone nearly 20 long years into their career. She is venerated by the greats who came before her, from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — who declared that Swift’s mega-popularity is the closest phenomenon to Beatlemania he’s ever seen – to Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton and Carole King. At just 34 years old, her catalog has inspired college courses all over the world that treat her written word with the same level of analysis as Wordsworth, and her business innovations – be it the album variations she’s been experimenting with since 1989’s collectible Polaroid sets, her negotiations with Spotify and Apple Music for fairer streaming rates or the playbook she’s still writing on how to re-release old music to new blockbuster returns – will continue to have reverberations throughout the industry, for longer than we can probably even currently imagine.
For all these reasons and so many more, she is Billboard’s No. 2 Greatest Pop Star of the 21st century, blowing past countless other accomplished hitmakers and icons. The fact that controversy will likely tear through the internet over her being just one small space below No. 1 is just another testament to her power, but regardless, her placement shouldn’t leave Swifties upset for too long — especially considering how much later in the millennium she got her start, both in the genre and music in general. In a way, Swift has always been like pop’s most curious tourist, never quite feeling like she’d always belonged there, more so trying on the things she liked best about the territory and sticking to her own guns for the rest. Instead of coming up and thriving naturally within the bounds of what we understand pop to be then and now, she rewrote the genre in her own image and, in doing so, charted a new course for crossover success that countless other confessional singer-songwriters like Olivia Rodrigo, Phoebe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams have since benefitted from.
That’s a lot more than tween Taylor bargained for when she wrote on her first album that she was “just a girl, trying to find a place in this world.” And if what her history has told us remains true, she’s still just getting started.
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 (Dec. 3) as we unveil our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of the Century so far!
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. Rihanna2. Taylor Swift
Adele is celebrating the end of her two-year Las Vegas residency with some commemorative keepsakes. The singer announced in an Instagram post on Tuesday (Nov. 26) that she is offering fans who made it to the Weekends With Adele extravaganza — as well as those who didn’t — a live album with a special bit of fairy dust from the series.
“To commemorate the ending of my residency in Las Vegas, I’m making a limited edition vinyl box set featuring the entire live setlist, a photo book, and even confetti from the show,” the singer wrote alongside an animation showing off the colorful box that features a grand piano on the front and opens up to reveal some spectacular photos of the show, as well as a full-color 56-page book and three 180g LPs.
The $349 box recorded during the 100-show residency at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace features two hours of music across 21 tracks, including such beloved hits as “Hello,” “Easy On Me,” “Rumor Has It,” “Skyfall,” “Set Fire to the Rain,” “Someone Like You” and “Rolling in the Deep,” among others; the estimated shipping date for the box is February 2025.
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And that’s not all. The singer is also selling some holiday-appropriate merch that includes a new card game called, naturally, “Love Is a Game,” that comes in a handsome burgundy box. The “conversation cards” inside include such topics as “Let’s Begin,” “When We Were Young” and “Who Am Eye?” with question including “Who do you love fighting with?” and “A time when you were wrong about yourself.”
Her web store is also stocked with a $15 Adele ceramic Christmas tree ornament featuring a vintage-looking pic of the singer in profile and a drawstring pouch, as well as an $85 green crewneck sweatshirt with a bedazzled “A” logo on the front, matching $80 green holiday sweatpants and a $90 black Adele hoodie.
Earlier in the day the singer reminisced about her “adventure” in Las Vegas during the run of twice-a-weekend shows that kicked off in November 2022 and wound down on Saturday. “Las Vegas you’ve been so good to me,” she wrote. “This residency went on to mirror what 30 was about – lost and broken to healed and thriving! Seems so fitting in the end.”
Adele has not said what she will do next, but the singer who typically takes extended breaks between albums has previously hinted at plans to temporarily step away from music, saying she’s prepared to take a “big break after this.”
Check out Adele’s preview of the box set and her holiday gear below.
(This list is a project that Billboard initially published in 2018, and which we’ve updated in some form every year since. In honor of our associated Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list finally nearing its conclusion — we’re publishing our No. 2 essay today (Nov. 26), with No. 1 coming next Tuesday (Dec. 3) — we’re republishing the project, now updated until 2023, and in a more easily navigated form. Check it out here and come back next week for both the reveal of our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century, and then the week after as we begin rolling out our picks for the Greatest Pop Star of 2024!)
Pop stardom is, in many ways, a competitive sport. Not one that demands a lone winner as justification for the whole enterprise, exactly, but one that still entrances those of us watching from the sidelines to see who’ll come out on top. Who’s No. 1 this week? Who outsold who? Who’s playing the biggest venues? Who’s racking up Grammys, BBMAs, VMAs? Listeners can love and admire their artists of choice without them winning these many mini-battles — but when they do, it provides the same rush as a home-team victory, since it still provides some measure of that most important validation in fandom: Our fav is better than your fav.
Now, we here at Billboard obviously play no small part in the declaration of these victors, as success on our charts has long been one of the biggest measures by which pop stardom is sized and graded. But we also know that while chart success is an essential factor, pop stardom carries too many intangibles to be judged solely on any combination of numerical calculations. It’s not just hit singles and best-selling albums: It’s music videos, it’s live performances, it’s image, it’s headlines and controversy and cultural impact and overall ubiquity. It’s the answer to the question, “Could you have lived through this year without having an opinion on this artist?”
Of course, it’s a far more subjective assessment than simply which team scored more points by the final buzzer. But it’s a discussion that has long been ongoing for rappers, and now something our staffers and most trusted contributors have been working on for many months to bring it to the pop world — with our list of the greatest pop stars from each year since 1981.
Now, understand that when we say “pop star,” we’re not just meaning solo artists in the classic triple-threat, top 40 dead-center mold of Madonna and Michael Jackson. Those two artists appear, of course, as do many of their most obvious acolytes. But we define “pop star” broadly enough for it to also encompass rappers and singer-songwriters, rock bands and R&B groups. As long as they were impactful and wide-reaching enough to have a profound impact on that vague concept we know as the mainstream — and even more amorphously, the culture — they’re up for consideration here.
Why 1981 as a starting point? Well, gotta start somewhere, and ‘81 was the year that forever changed modern stardom, with the premiere of MTV cementing the music video as an elemental factor in pop iconicity. Though its true impact on the top 40 landscape wouldn’t really be felt for a couple years after its debut, videos forever changed the scale of pop stardom, making the biggest artists three-dimensional figures, as present in our lives as our favorite sitcom stars and talk show hosts, if not more so. The new competitive landscape of MTV rotation forced them to think bigger, to try harder — and from Janet to Alanis to Rihanna to Drake, it’s impossible to envision the past 40-plus years of pop stardom without its impact.
And what does “greatest” mean, exactly? Well, it’s not exactly “most popular,” though that’s certainly a large part of it. And it’s definitely not our personal favorites, strictly speaking — we love these artists, but this wasn’t the place for any of us to stump for our Should Be Bigger pet causes. Mostly, we’re looking for the pop star that best defines each year; the one whose impact was most deeply felt across the most spaces. How much of the year the artist is active for also matters: For instance, Taylor Swift might have released 1989 in 2014, but the album didn’t drop until October — so she’s more likely to be in play for 2015, when the set spun off most of its hit singles and videos and she spent most of the year on her victory lap world tour.
Of course, our perception of pop stardom is unavoidably colored by personal experience — and our decidedly North American perspective — and you might very well see some of our picks and think that based on your own memories, we couldn’t be more wrong. Totally fair: We’ve done the best we could with the objective stats and the emotional reactions we all have, but several of these come down to coin-flip situations where we had to just sigh and go with our gut. To acknowledge some of the artists we passed over, though, we’ve also included some honorable mentions for each year — along with awarding rookie of the year (for emerging pop stars then still new to the mainstream) and comeback of the year (for veteran stars who had their first big year in a while) distinctions for each year.
Read on below to find our essays attempting to justify our picks for each year — along with a handful of sidebar discussions that we couldn’t get to in our primary pieces — and feel free to let us know how we did your favorite artist wrong. Do try to remember, though: In pop music as in sports, there’s always next year.
1981: Blondie
Image Credit: Illustration by Heston Godby; Getty Images
For the 2021 update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard counted down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2021. At No. 1. we remember the year in Taylor Swift — who rewrote industry rules and had one of the most impactful years of her storied pop career without even releasing an entirely new album. Find a full essay about her 2021 below, and find our Greatest Pop Star picks for every year up to present day here.
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“You guys turned a hard thing into a very, very wonderful experience,” Taylor Swift told an audience of diehard fans at a November screening of her All Too Well short film at New York City’s AMC Lincoln Square theater. Before unveiling the self-directed companion piece to the 10-minute version of the fan favorite epic of the same name, featured on the re-recorded Red (Taylor’s Version), Swift expressed gratitude to a group of supporters that helped turn a non-single breakup track from her original 2012 album into a signature song worthy of expanding past the double-digit minute mark. “All Too Well” could have been little more than a personally revealing footnote to her career, Swift pointed out; instead, the fans identified its intimate power, championed it, and ultimately revived it, to create one of the most eagerly anticipated revisited songs in pop history. “All of this is happening,” Swift told her audience, “because you made this happen.”
Well, yes and no. Swift is correct that the fandom that gathered around “All Too Well” — a long-form songwriting feat, with some of the most evocative lyricism of Swift’s career — in the nine years since its original release helped clear the path for “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” as a capital-E Event stretching beyond the Swifties into the mainstream. Yet she deserves a ton of credit herself: No other popular artist harnessed that type of fan energy with as much passion and imagination in 2021 as Swift, across albums and platforms, on projects that challenged the modern music industry while still succeeding wildly within it.
Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2021:Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Comeback of the Year: Willow | Rookie of the Year: Olivia Rodrigo | No. 10: Bad Bunny | No. 9: Dua Lipa | No. 8: Justin Bieber | No. 7: Drake | No. 6: BTS | No. 5: The Weeknd | No. 4: Doja Cat | No. 3: Adele | No. 2: Lil Nas X
Swift began 2021 still riding high from a triumphant 2020 – a year she reasonably could have taken off, having delivered her Lover album in August 2019 and watched her planned Lover Fest stadium shows fall victim to the pandemic the following year. Instead, Swift fell down a musical rabbit hole that yielded two full albums and, in hindsight, catered perfectly to her songwriting strengths. The first one, Folklore scored the largest debut week for an album in 2020 upon its July release, and companion piece Evermore earned the fifth-largest in December, both ending 2020 and starting 2021 atop the Billboard 200 albums chart.
With Evermore, Swift continued the sonic reinvention kick-started by Folklore, an unexpected alt-folk exploration recorded in secret during quarantine with indie vets like The National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Evermore would go on to spend three total weeks atop the Billboard 200 in 2021. Meanwhile, its hushed, woodsy single “Willow,” which launched atop the Hot 100 in December alongside the album release, grew into a radio success in the spring, ascending to No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Pop Airplay chart in April.
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Before that, however, Swift won another album of the year trophy. At the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in March, Folklore took home the top prize — the third of Swift’s career, following wins for Fearless at the 2010 ceremony and 1989 in 2016. Not only did the win help Swift enter the record books, as the fourth artist overall and only woman with three album of the year wins (following Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon), the accomplishment was also a bit of personal validation after Swift’s two previous albums, 2017’s Reputation and 2019’s Lover, were not even nominated in the top category. Once again, Swift thanked the fans, this time for embracing the artistic swerve of her 2020 output: “You guys met us in this imaginary world that we created,” she said in her acceptance speech, “and we can’t tell you how honored we are forever by this.”
One month later, Swift returned to that first album of the year winner of hers. In April, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) kicked off the behemoth endeavor of re-recording her first six studio albums. Announced in 2019, the project followed the acquisition of Swift’s master recordings by Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, as a way for her to essentially reclaim ownership over the period of her career that made her a household name. What could have been an industry curiosity based around a rights dispute instead played out like a widescreen revisit to a pivotal era of Swift’s career, as hits like “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story” were lovingly re-created, and previously unreleased tracks from the Fearless recording sessions were finally unveiled as “From The Vault” treasures.
The amount of care that Swift put into Fearless (Taylor’s Version) turned the 26-track set into a must-hear remake of the diamond-certified original, and fans embraced it as such. The full-length became the first re-recorded version of a previous No. 1 album to top the Billboard 200 albums chart upon its release, with the biggest debut week of 2021 at the time with 291,000 equivalent album units, according to MRC Data.
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It wasn’t the only way that Swift’s towering legacy cast a shadow over the first half of 2021, either. In between the April release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and the June announcement that Red (Taylor’s Version) would be the next re-recorded album to arrive in November, Swift proved a key influence, and contributor, to another artist’s year-defining album. Pop singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo hasn’t been shy about her love of Swift’s music over the course of her breakout year, name-checking the superstar as a sonic and spiritual guide when “Drivers License” was released back in January, and receiving an Instagram shout-out from Swift during the debut single’s quick ascent.
Rodrigo’s debut album Sour took the adoration even further upon its May release: the heart-wrenching piano ballad “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” borrowed from Swift’s own heart-wrenching piano ballad, 2017’s “New Year’s Day,” resulting in Swift and Jack Antonoff being listed as writers on the track. Two months after the album’s release, Rodrigo also added Swift, Antonoff and Annie Clark as co-writers to the post-breakup reflection “Deja Vu” due to the bridge’s similarities to Swift’s own complex-romance remembrance, 2019’s “Cruel Summer.” Rodrigo is pop’s rookie of the year with 2021’s biggest breakthrough album — which Swift gets some of the credit for, in ways both figurative and literal.
Delays in the vinyl shipping of Evermore pushed the album back to the top of the Billboard 200 when the record was finally sent out to fans in June, displacing Sour at No. 1 for a nice bit of teacher-student pop interplay. Swift stayed active all summer, guesting on two songs on How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, the latest album from Dessner’s Big Red Machine project — a charming continuation of the Folklore/Evermore era of gentle songwriting and rustic textures — and tossing out the Taylor’s Version re-recording of 1989’s “Wildest Dreams” to have a little fun with an unexpected viral moment the song was enjoying on TikTok.
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But by then, the 1989 era wasn’t the one fans were anxiously awaiting to revisit. If Red (Taylor’s Version) had simply matched Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in terms of fanfare and listenership, Swift’s year would have still been pretty spectacular. Instead, her second re-recorded album wildly outpaced its predecessor in nearly every way, turning the release of “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” into a cultural sensation — The short film! The remarkable SNL performance! The new lyrical allusions that launched a thousand Jake Gyllenhaal jokes! — and another chart-topper for Swift. With its November debut atop the Hot 100, “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” also became the longest No. 1 in the chart’s history — in the age of TikTok virality and dwindling attention spans, no less.
The expanded “All Too Well” wasn’t the only new revelation from the set, which also boasted new collaborations with Phoebe Bridgers, Ed Sheeran and Chris Stapleton on old “From The Vault” tracks; the Stapleton team-up, “I Bet You Think About Me,” has been getting airplay on Swift’s old stomping grounds of country radio. In the end, Red (Taylor’s Version) drove as much conversation as any of Swift’s recent all-new studio albums, and scored a blockbuster debut, with 605,000 first-week equivalent album units moved — good for the third-best debut week of 2021 with, it bears repeating, the majority of its songs released nearly a decade earlier.
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Even without a proper new album in 2021, Swift sent three separate projects to the top spot of the Billboard 200 during the calendar year — the first female artist to accomplish that feat in the chart’s 65-year history. And in November, one final domino fell for Swift’s re-recordings project when iHeartRadio announced that it would now only be playing Taylor’s Versions of her older hits from each album as they rolled out – after streaming platforms had already given them prominent placement on main pages and major playlists. In addition to the impressive sales of her re-recorded albums, the reactions from the streaming and radio worlds underline the widespread acceptance that these new recordings have replaced the classic versions as the ones listeners will be digesting and caring about moving forward.
As Swift enters 2022, she once again has the chance to make history: Evermore is nominated for the album of the year Grammy, and a victory at the Jan. 31 ceremony would make her the most celebrated artist in the 64-year history of the category. While other popular artists are rightfully celebrating award nominations and chart achievements, Swift can do both, while also credibly changing the way artists can approach creative ownership and sonic shifts. If Swift changed the game in the mid-2010s when pivoting from country to pop, playing it top 40’s way and earning the splashiest commercial wins of her career, including the distinction of also being Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 2015, the past year found her rejecting the game entirely and drawing up her own rules. Now, she has the power to pull any sound she wants into her mainstream orbit, or make any industry institution reckon with her impact. She could release a 20-minute version of a song on her next re-recorded album, and you’d be foolish to bet against it becoming a hit.
Taylor Swift is making the type of moves within and outside of her music that elevate an artist from superstar to legend. Those moves are often very hard to execute, but no one who had been paying attention was the least bit surprised when she stuck each landing. Wind in her hair, Swift is here, and making it look all too easy.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2022 here, or head back to the full list of every Greatest Pop Star from 1981-present here.)
(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981 — along with a handful of sidebar columns and lists on other important pop star themes from the period. Find one such sidebar below recapping the 10 most unforgettably eventful years of the modern pop era, and find our Greatest Pop Star picks for every year up to present day here.)
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Not all years in pop music are created equal — sometimes, the stars just align. Here are our picks for the 10 absolute starriest.
10. 2003
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Why One of the Best? Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake broke out as solo superstars, 50 Cent debuted and “Hey Ya!” reigned supreme.
And Don’t Forget About: Crunk’s turn in the spotlight, thanks to Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz and the Ying Yang Twins crashing the mainstream with the No. 2-peaking “Get Low. “
9. 2010
Why One of the Best? Katy Perry, Kesha and Rihanna made pop radio exciting again, while Lil Wayne, Drake and Nicki Minaj worked on building the Young Money empire.
And Don’t Forget About: Bruno Mars’ introduction to top 40, guiding B.o.B (“Nothin’ on You”) and Travie McCoy (“Billionaire”) to heavy rotation with guest hooks, then scoring his first solo No. 1 (“Just the Way You Are”).
8. 1993
Why One of the Best? Grunge and G-Funk’s brightest stars were all at their peaks, as Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson held it down for top 40.
And Don’t Forget About: The epic Aerosmith trilogy of Alicia Silverstone-starring, MTV-conquering Get a Grip videos: “Cryin’,”“Amazing” and (the next year) “Crazy.”
7. 1989
Why One of the Best? Just ask Taylor Swift: A year of incredible pop imagination from the likes of Madonna, Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown, and again, Janet Jackson.
And Don’t Forget About: The year of Young M.C., both with his own pop-rap breakthrough smash “Bust a Move” and as writer of Tone Loc’s two top 10 hits “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina.”
6. 1997
Why One of the Best? The mid-decade’s pop doldrums gave way to Hanson and the Spice Girls, plus the Bad Boy Family took hip-hop to new heights on radio and MTV.
And Don’t Forget About: Lilith Fair tour founder Sarah McLachlan, and first-year-performers Jewel, Paula Cole and Fiona Apple — all singer-songwriters who had huge crossover years in ‘97.
5. 1983
Why One of the Best? MTV officially came into its own, spawning countless new wave stars and aiding Michael Jackson’s rise to historic greatness.
And Don’t Forget About: Donna Summer, biggest pop star of the disco ‘70s, scoring her greatest video-era hit with the working woman’s anthem “She Works Hard For the Money.”
4. 2009
Why One of the Best? Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Justin Bieber reinvented pop superstardom for the YouTube era, and Taylor Swift and Drake prepped for their next decade of dominance.
And Don’t Forget About: The year’s two longest-reigning Hot 100 No. 1s both belonging to electro-rap goofballs The Black Eyed Peas (“Boom Boom Pow,” “I Gotta Feeling”)
3. 2016
Why One of the Best? Huge releases from Beyoncé, Kanye West and Rihanna changed the way we think about pop albums in the streaming age, while Drake and Bieber ran radio.
And Don’t Forget About: Memes becoming rap kingmakers, with both Rae Sremmurd (“Black Beatles” with Gucci Mane) and Migos (“Bad and Boujee” with Lil Uzi Vert) seeing singles go viral late in the year.
2. 1999
Why One of the Best? The TRL era went supernova, with Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys taking teen pop to a new level, and Eminem and the nu-metal explosion providing valuable counter-programming.
And Don’t Forget About: The Latin Pop explosion crashing U.S. shores, with Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Enrique Iglesias and Marc Anthony all becoming enormous Stateside stars.
1. 1984
Why One of the Best? Michael. Madonna. Prince. Bruce. Tina. Cyndi. Lionel. George. Enough said.
And Don’t Forget About: The Cars, Van Halen and ZZ Top: Three ‘70s rock bands who successfully made the transition to MTV and enjoyed their biggest pop year in ‘84.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2021 here, or head back to the full list here.)
(In 2020, the Billboard staff updated our originally 2018-released list project, which selected a Greatest Pop Star of every year going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why BTS was our Greatest Pop Star of 2020 — with our ’20 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)
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Americans have a checkered history of dismissing things they don’t understand — the metric system, universal healthcare, and of course, K- pop. Until the last few years, the colorful world of Korean pop was a genre that was on the periphery of the American pop mainstream, marked by viral-hit outliers like PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and groups like 2NE1 and Girls’ Generation gracing the lower reaches of the Billboard charts. But after half a decade of internationally successful tours, three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, and a steadily amassed fan ARMY that includes followers from all over the world, RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook — better known as the world-conquering boy band BTS — heralded the genre’s true U.S. breakthrough, and became the greatest pop stars of 2020.
In February 2020, the septet released their fourth studio album Map of the Soul: 7, led by the electrifying “On.” The album earned the group their fourth No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with critics noting their musical diversity and maturity as songwriters. Despite such acclaim and a strong chart debut, the group remained largely off the U.S. radio airwaves. In a push to win over stateside listeners, the track was accompanied by three stunning visuals, a remixed rendition featuring English-language pop star Sia, and a tour of the hottest tickets on late night TV. “On” became BTS’ first entry to land in the top five on the Hot 100, debuting at No. 4. With the group’s international stadium tour slated to kick off in April, things were revving up for BTS to officially take over the U.S. market.
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But by March, the COVID-19 pandemic had dashed the live hopes for BTS and every other touring artist. While many acts scrambled to pivot, every move of the group’s in the consequent months was made with precision — securing both financial and cultural gains in the U.S., South Korea, and the rest of the world. With the support of its dedicated fan base, BTS instead dominated in the livestream and virtual space, holding June’s widely successful Bang Bang Con virtual concert (which drew in $19 million) and making a heartfelt commencement speech (delivered in both English and Korean) at Youtube’s Dear Class of 2020, a virtual event for students graduating in the time of COVID. While A-list stars tend to be selective with their appearances, BTS doubled down on performances, as they made rounds at the Billboard Music Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and even a more intimate set at NPR’s Tiny Desk — ultimately maintaining the members’ visibility and social media presence all throughout the year.
Beyond the numbers, the group also translated the social consciousness of its music into action by responding to the racial reckoning in America. In June, following the national protests over George Floyd’s killing, BTS donated $1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement. When asked about this decision, Jin recalled how “when we’re abroad or in other situations, we’ve also been subjected to prejudice.” (BTS’ rise in US popularity has also persisted despite the alarming rise in discrimination and hate crimes against Asian-Americans in 2020, likely stemming from the rhetoric surrounding COVID-19.)
When August rolled around, the eight memembers still had a few tricks up their pastel-colored sleeves. Even with their growing list of achievements, BTS remained absent from American pop radio until they released their first ever English-language single, the explosive megapop track “Dynamite.” Dropping the single became the group’s crowning moment in mainstream U.S. music, making its way to radio stations, awards shows, TikTok trends, and the top spot on the Hot 100. The track even grabbed the attention of the Recording Academy, with a Grammy nomination for best pop duo/group performance — the first-ever Grammy nomination for a K-pop artist, a feat long coveted by the band. By October, BTS’ label Big Hit Entertainment had positioned itself to go public on the Korea Exchange. The label raised the equivalent of $840 million in its initial public offering (IPO) — making Big Hit founder/co-CEO Bang Si-hyuk a billionaire.
On the heels of the group’s first No. 1, BTS notched two more buzzer-beating Hot 100-toppers to round out the year. In October BTS racked up a second No. 1 with an appearance on the remix to Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love,” helping the song catapult from No. 8 to the top spot following the new version’s first week of release. Then, to cap the group’s historic 2020, BTS dropped fifth studio album Be in November, along with its melancholy, quarantine-appropriate single “Life Goes On.” Both album and single simultaneously debuted at No. 1, on the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, respectively. Impressively, “Life Goes On” became the first primarily Korean No. 1 in the latter chart’s 62-year history (beating the previous No. 2 peak of PSY’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012).
It’s impossible to ignore that BTS is the first Asian artist to appear on this list, alongside undeniable, no-questions-asked English-language superstars. While non-English works of art are often sidelined into “foreign” categories, this level of recognition for a predominantly Korean-language band from Western media — the group was even named 2020 Entertainer of the Year by TIME — feels like a changing of the guard at the gates of American top 40. With each milestone and new No. 1 in 2020, BTS made it harder for U.S. audiences to deny not only the group’s own supreme superstardom, but also K-pop’s much-deserved place in mainstream music. And now that we’re finally listening, it pains us to imagine all the potential pop classics we missed out on simply because of the language barrier between us.
Honorable Mention: The Weeknd (After Hours, “Blinding Lights,” “In Your Eyes”), Dua Lipa (Future Nostalgia, “Don’t Start Now,” “Break My Heart”), Taylor Swift (Folklore, Evermore, Miss Americana documentary)
Rookie of the Year: Roddy Ricch
“Stream yummy by justin bieber.” That message, along with a flex emoji, was Compton, CA rapper Roddy Ricch’s tweeted response to the Belieber fan movement — also promoted by Bieber himself — to get the pop superstar’s new single to No. 1 on the Hot 100. But Ricch knew that the song then occupying the top spot, his own cinematic blockbuster “The Box,” was likely unmovable; indeed, the captivating, flow-shifting breakthrough smash would end up spending 11 straight weeks atop the chart. He’d add on another seven weeks to that tally in the summer with his guest spot on DaBaby’s “Rockstar,” and spent three additional weeks atop the Billboard 200 with his action-packed debut LP Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial after it debuted at No. 1 at the end of 2019, proving his solo star power. His response when Selena Gomez’s fans tried to mount a challenge to it for one of those weeks? “Stream rare by selena gomez.”
Comeback of the Year: The Black Eyed Peas
“I want to make fantasy, feel-good, people-travel-the-world music,” Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am told Billboard of his ambitions in June 2020 — a time when not a lot of people were traveling the world or feeling good. Still, fantasy has always been a specialty of the pop-rap group, whose commercial peak came with a series of celebratory party jams released in the wake of the ‘08 financial crisis. The world was once again ready for will & co. in 2020, when the reunited group’s globetrotting took them to the world of Latin pop and reggaetón, resulting in their first visits to the Hot 100 since 2011, via collabs with international stars J Balvin (“Ritmo (Bad Boys For Life)”) and Ozuna (“Mamacita”). The group’s comeback year was capped by a closing set at the MTV Video Music Awards, ending with them playing signature smash “I Gotta Feeling” while a gigantic UFO appeared from above to beam them up; for 2020, it felt about right.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2021 here, or head back to the full list here.)
(In 2019, the Billboard staff updated our originally 2018-released list project, which selected a Greatest Pop Star of every year going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Ariana Grande was our Greatest Pop Star of 2019 — with our ’19 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)
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For a while, Ariana Grande did everything by the book. She worked with the biggest and best producers (Babyface, Max Martin) to create radio-friendly singles (she had eight top 10 tracks on the Hot 100 pre-Sweetener) that featured the right of-the-moment guest stars (Mac Miller, Iggy Azalea, Nicki Minaj) and showcased her superlative voice. But she was stuck in top-tier pop limbo: big enough for an insatiable, powerful army of fans, but not quite big enough to claim ubiquity — much less coolness.
Then she released Sweetener in 2018: the bubbly, optimistic response to both surviving a terrorist attack on her Manchester concert and getting engaged to SNL star Pete Davidson. The shift in her sound from top 40-oriented pop to eclectic, glitchy (via Pharrell) R&B — plus the album’s clear message of resilience — was enough to push her fully into the critical and popular mainstream. But just when Grande seemed on track to finally graduate out of pop princess-dom, she was hit (along with the rest of the music world) by another tragedy, when Mac Miller, her close friend, collaborator and ex, died from an overdose. She and Davidson split not long after.
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Despite the fact that she was just a couple months removed from Sweetener, Grande elected to give the people what they wanted — some reaction to the turmoil in her personal life — in a form they never expected: a surprise-released, baldly confessional, irresistibly catchy single called “Thank U, Next.” That song, with its bouncy, call-and-response chorus and tabloid-inciting namechecks of Grande’s famous exes, became her first Hot 100 No. 1 that November — and would still rule that chart when 2019 began.
Just because Grande started 2019 at the top of the Hot 100 didn’t necessarily she would end the year as its defining pop star. But then she released her tour de force album, also called Thank U, Next — a project that drove home the fact that she had finally won over both critics and, well, everyone. As Next garnered near-universal critical endorsement, Grande cornered the top 3 spots on the Hot 100 with “7 Rings,” “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored” and “Thank U, Next” — the first artist to wrangle the top three on the chart simultaneously since The Beatles nearly half a century earlier.
In essence, she’d turned lemons into a multi-platinum pitcher of lemonade. Her previously announced Sweetener World Tour expanded from 59 arena dates to 101, mostly sold out to tens of thousands of screaming fans who were then documented on her live album, K, Bye For Now — released the day after the tour’s late-2019 finale at the Forum in Los Angeles. Grande had grabbed the reins, eschewing the conventional release schedules and promo tours she’d hewn to for most of her career — instead, she was releasing music more or less as she made it. Finally, the spontaneity and reactiveness that had long been de rigueur in hip-hop was working for a star used to the set schedule of the pop machine.
After releasing two big albums in a six-month span, Grande refused to space out singles in a methodical way. Soon after her history-making run at the top of the Hot 100, she started ignoring the albums altogether, in favor of trading verses with 2 Chainz and Lizzo and sharing one-off tracks made with her closest collaborators to boost their careers (Victoria Monet’s “Monopoly” and Social House’s “Boyfriend”). She produced her first soundtrack for the Charlie’s Angels reboot, a star-studded affair that included the minor hit “Don’t Call Me Angel” with Lana Del Rey and Miley Cyrus. Somehow in between all of that, Grande sorted through live tracks for the album after her shows and shared that process with her tireless fans on social media, effectively balancing effortless pop star gloss with the more confessional, real-time pace that medium requires.
The K, Bye live album seemed like the cherry on top of a year that Grande had dedicated to showing her work. It hadn’t been enough to simply make good or even great pop songs, to be pretty and charming. So Grande put everything she had on the line, taking personal and musical risks, sharing more of herself than is really fair to expect of anyone — and it worked. It became impossible to ignore that she was not only a generational vocal talent, but a thoughtful, audacious, vulnerable artist wrapped up in pop star packaging. On K, Bye, you hear her voice soar, and then crack as she cries. It’s mostly exposed, not cloaked in reverb: just one more risk that Grande has the skill to make pay off.
Honorable Mention: Post Malone (Hollywood’s Bleeding, “Sunflower,” “Circles”), Billie Eilish (When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, “Bad Guy,” “Everything I Wanted”), Lizzo (Cuz I Love You, “Truth Hurts,” “Good As Hell”)
Rookie of the Year: Lil Nas X
It’s always refreshing when, even as increasingly precise analytics and data shape the music industry, something truly surprising happens — in 2019, that something was the literally unprecedented mainstream success of a country-trap hybrid by a gay, Black artist. No one in 2018 would or could have guessed that a song called “Old Town Road,” comprised of a Nine Inch Nails sample and a truly spectacular hook, would become the longest-running Hot 100 No. 1 of all time. Perhaps most importantly, the song’s ascendance alongside the “yee-haw agenda” proved once again that hand-wringing about what constitutes real country is as futile as any other kind of genre orthodoxy.
Comeback of the Year: Jonas Brothers
The JoBros and their purity rings may have ridden out of the industry almost a decade ago as a punchline, but the potent combination of recent nostalgia and an album of unexpectedly solid jams — aided by the successful side careers of Nick and Joe — made their return hit significantly harder than those of most aging boy bands. “Sucker,” the first single the group had released in six years, became their very first Hot 100 No. 1; the album, Happiness Begins, was 2019’s biggest debut until Taylor Swift dropped Lover. The Jonas Brothers may have gotten older, but people’s enthusiasm for bright, fun harmonies and massive pop hooks hasn’t changed a bit.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2020 here, or head back to the full list here.)
(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Ed Sheeran was our Greatest Pop Star of 2018 — with our ’18 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)
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Drake’s generational popularity by the time of 2018 could only be truly grasped through a deep understanding of late-’10s trends, of collapsing genre borders and changing gatekeepers, of social media-driven virality and narrative-building, and of general Millennial anxieties and aspirations. But in a sense, all you need is one number: 29.
That’s how many weeks Drake spent at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 2018 — not even counting his crucial uncredited appearance on Travis Scott’s chart-topping “Sicko Mode” — the most for a single year in the chart’s 60-plus history. When you can claim majority ownership of the Hot 100 for a calendar year, chances are you’re just the guy for that year.
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It was the culmination of a decade in the spotlight for the teen actor turned hip-hop superstar. With the blessing and early guidance of Young Money label paterfamilias/21st-century icon Lil Wayne, Drake broke out at the end of the ‘00s with a blend of puffed-chest hashtag rhyming and melancholy, melodic introspection, often singing and rapping on the same song. His hooks, verses and business sense only sharpened into the thick of the 2010s, and by 2013 he could credibly claim to be “just as famous as my mentor.” In 2016, he was unmistakably the biggest rapper in the world, with both an album (Views) and lead single (“One Dance”) topping the Billboard charts for double-digit weeks — even though the muted critical and fan reception to each seemed to leave the rapper vulnerable to claims about his slide being imminent.
Indeed, what made Drake’s unprecedented level of chart prosperity in 2018 so fascinating is that it happened while, on a slightly more below-the-surface level, his career was thoroughly under siege. A long-simmering feud with veteran street rapper Pusha T and his superstar producer Kanye West reached a breaking point with an escalating trio of volleys between the two rappers — Pusha’s “Infrared,” Drake’s “Duppy Freestyle” and then Pusha’s “The Story of Adidon.” The last one landed the heaviest blows, most notably unearthing (via its single art) an early photo that the mixed-race Drake had taken in Blackface, and revealing that the rapper had fathered the titular child the year before, whose presence he’d not yet announced to the world.
The threat to Drake’s credibility felt real, as it had three years earlier, when collaborator Meek Mill — like Pusha, a respected rapper whose hard-luck hustle and come-up fit the classic hip-hop narrative a lot more neatly than the Canadian-bred, Degrassi-starring Drake — declared war via ghostwriting accusations. But in 2015, Drake triumphed with volume (in both senses), as he dropped two diss tracks aimed at Meek before he could respond with one, then loudly proclaimed victory at his OVO fest while his rival was still trying to figure out what had even happened.
By 2018, Drake was well-positioned enough in the pop mainstream to just let his stats do the talking. He refrained from directly responding to “Adidon,” and trusted that his commercial momentum was overwhelming enough to weather any blows to his image and rep. He had reason for confidence: “God’s Plan,” released that January, had already reigned for 11 weeks on the Hot 100 with no chorus or major musical hook, while follow-up “Nice For What” — which had both, plus a star-studded female takeover video — followed it for seven non-consecutive weeks immediately after. (Even third single “I’m Upset,” which failed to match those commercial heights, provided a valuable diversion when its Degrassi-reuniting video dropped in the weeks following Pusha’s verbal assault.)
Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, Drake’s bet was validated. Fifth studio solo album Scorpion was released in June — a double album, many of whose tracks addressed the Adidon controversy without furthering the tête-à-tête with its progenitor. Those songs still captured headlines and inspired trending topics, but not as many as a new track that had nothing to do with Drake’s son at all: “In My Feelings,” a New Orleans bounce-inspired banger that both sampled and shouted out ascendant Miami duo City Girls, and even invoked Wayne (via his own crossover classic “Lollipop”) as a NoLa patron saint. The dance challenge “Feelings” quickly inspired blew up over social media, the song rocketed to No. 1, and Scorpion made all kinds of chart history while posting the year’s best first-week numbers. By the end of the summer — which “In My Feelings” owned almost exclusively — the Pusha feud was again a footnote.
The year cemented Drake as finally having reached the same level of commercial invincibility as the giants of the Reagan era. After all, what MTV was to the early ‘80s, social media is to the late ‘10s, and in Drake the moment had officially found its Michael Jackson: one whose videos dominated through memes and gifs rather than TV rotation, one whose albums subsequently racked up historic Spotify play counts instead of unprecedented retail numbers, and one whose dance crazes didn’t even have to be performed by the man himself to become iconic. What’s more, he made it clear to future rap adversaries that he’s now playing by pop rules — and as his 2018 foe should understand better than anyone, he’ll never be taken down as long as he’s still putting numbers on the boards.
Honorable Mention: Ariana Grande (Sweetener, “No Tears Left to Cry,” “Thank U Next”), Cardi B (Invasion of Privacy, “I Like It,” “Finesse (Remix)”), Post Malone (Beerbongs and Bentleys, “Psycho,” “Better Now”)
Rookie of the Year: Dua Lipa
America took its time with Dua Lipa, the Albanian-English pop singer-songwriter who’d already become massive just about everywhere else by the time “New Rules” started to creep its way up the Hot 100 at the end of 2017. It entered the top 10 in early 2018, thanks to its brain-sticking refrain — which took a proactive and highly memeable approach to heartbreak — and viral music video, whose refined choreography and inspired art direction framed Lipa as the star that she really already was. She closed the year as the house diva of choice for Calvin Harris (“One Kiss”) and Diplo/Mark Ronson superduo Silk City (“Electricity”), scoring international hits that made her unavoidable even between album cycles, as true a star sign as any.
Comeback of the Year: Lil Wayne
Really, Lil Wayne deserves the title here for the Carter V announcement video alone: a charming mini-tour through his domicile and house studio, in which he announced with a gleaming-as-ever smile that the long awaited fifth installment in his signature LP series was imminent. The hype was instant, and the album delivered: a 23-track set that delighted fans and even impressed critics, featuring Wayne’s most invigorated rapping in years and some of his most personal bars ever. A decade of label drama and disappointment was seemingly washed away in the record’s first week, where it posted nearly half a million in units moved, littered the Hot 100 with new entries, and proved that Dwayne Carter was still very much Weezy F. Baby, and the “F” ain’t for “finished.”
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2019 here, or head back to the full list here.)
Taylor Swift is singing the praises of Eras Tour opener Gracie Abrams. In a post reflecting on her six-show run in Toronto, the pop superstar gushed about how fans in Canada’s biggest city treated the concerts like they were a “hometown show” before turning her attention to the “That’s So True” singer, who has opened […]
(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981 — along with a handful of sidebar columns and lists on other important pop star themes from the period. Find one such sidebar below about how Lorde unforgettably took the air out of an increasingly puffed-up 2013 pop landscape, and find our Greatest Pop Star picks for every year up to present day here.)
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Over the early 2010s, as a class of rising and returning stars was minted on radio, iTunes and YouTube, pop’s arms race was accelerating to unsustainable levels of hype. Each major-label release was a self-proclaimed event, each expected to be bigger than the last. Something had to give, and in 2013, the dam broke — over and over again. Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP, Katy Perry’s PRISM, Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail, Britney Spears’ Britney Jean, Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2; each promised the world, and each fell short in different, fascinating, and exhausting ways.
Amidst all the hubbub emerged a 16-year-old with humble origins and a grand name: Lorde.
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Popular music had never seen a teenage star quite as self-possessed as the New Zealand native, whose debut single “Royals” was pointed directly at the state of the pop zeitgeist: “Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash/ We don’t care/ We aren’t caught up in your love affair/ And we’ll never be royals…” Her Queen-like vocal harmonies swoop above her dramatic, yet conversational lead vocals, barely accompanied by producer Joel Little’s kick drums and finger-snaps. This was a pop song with no obvious predecessor, whose negative space forced the listener to lean in and take notice.
“Let me live that fantasy,” Lorde sang with a knowing irony — that even as a buzzy artist signed to Universal, she’d likely never reach those heights. Incredibly, she did: From its initial release in November 2012, “Royals” slowly made its way up charts and playlists across the globe. By late 2013, it had not only topped the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, but also reached top five on alternative and hip-hop/R&B radio — becoming a truly post-genre hit.
If Lana Del Rey was the first figurehead in pop’s trajectory towards moodier, more hip-hop-inflected territory over the 2010s — scoring her own first two top 40 hits in 2013, after her splashy 2011 debut and subsequent backlash the next year — Lorde took it to another level. Her debut album Pure Heroine more than delivered, bringing her tales of teenage ennui to a mass audience, while only hinting at the potential she’d unlock with 2017’s sweeping Melodrama. Though Lorde wouldn’t maintain her brief position as a singles-driven hitmaker, she’d become even more beloved as a cult pop artist.
“Post-genre,” “alt-pop” — these were labels that had never been applied to mainstream pop even as late as 2010, that have now become the norm for an entire class of streaming-era artists who aspire to cultural cachet over traditional pop stardom. “Royals” was one of the decade’s most minimalist hits, but it dared to dream big — leaving a long-term impact even Lorde herself could never have imagined.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2014 here, or head back to the full list here.)