In 2019, Billboard ‘s staff revealed its picks for the greatest pop star of every year dating back to 1981 (the first year of MTV, essentially the birth of the modern pop era), with essays making the case for each as the biggest, brightest and most important star in their solar system that calendar year. For the last few years , we’ve also counted down our picks for the 10 greatest pop stars of the 12-month period, with each getting their own year-in-review tribute from one of our staffers. (Our picks for the No.
1 Greatest Pop Star of the Year this decade have included BTS , Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift .) But with the quarter-century mark coming up, we decided it was a good time to zoom out a little bit on the whole last 25 years in pop stardom. And so this week, we begin our countdown of the 25 Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century: a list attempting to take stock of the pop stars who have been most important and most impactful in the U.
S. over that timespan. We will be unveiling our list over the course of the next four months, unveiling one or two artists a week, along with our usual essays commemorating each artist — as well as additional articles focusing on different aspects of their careers and rounding up their chart achievements, and regular podcast and video discussions of our chosen stars’ careers and legacies.
We hope it will all serve to properly celebrate the 25 artists who have most defined the pop music and pop culture of the first 25% of this century.