With the primary quarter of the Twenty first century coming to a detailed, Billboard has spent the previous few months counting down our employees picks for the 25 biggest pop stars of the final 25 years. You can see the celebrities who’ve made our checklist up to now right here — and now, we look at the century in Beyoncé, our editorial employees’s decide for the No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of the Twenty first Century. While Taylor Swift is the century’s largest pop star by the numbers — from album gross sales to streams to touring dominance — our editorial employees selected Beyoncé as our Greatest Pop Star of the Century, based mostly on her full 25 years of affect, evolution and impression.
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(Also, have enjoyable reliving our employees’s checklist of Beyoncé’s 100 Greatest Pop Star Moments, and take a look at our just lately rebuilt checklist of our picks for the Greatest Pop Star by Year from 1981 to 2023 — which we’ll be including a 2024 version to later this month.)
On March 18, 2000, Beyoncé Knowles topped the Billboard Hot 100 for the primary time this century. She did in order 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 basic “Bills, Bills, Bills,” however this was one was even higher: “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 prefer it simply received some terrifying information. At the middle of the futuristic (however TRL-ready) manufacturing’s anxiousness assault was Beyoncé, cool and in management as she demanded the acknowledgment she knew she deserved: “You actin’ kinda shady/ Ain’t callin’ me child/ Better say my title.”
On March 2, 2024, Beyoncé Knowles – who’d added a “-Carter” to her final title by that time – topped the Hot 100 for the twelfth 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 tune was devised because the lead single to her acclaimed Cowboy Carter album, which featured Bey road-tripping by nation music’s previous, current and future – with navigation help from the style’s residing legends and rising stars – and “Hold ‘Em” invited followers alongside for the trip, so long as they got here appropriate with it: “It’s an actual life boogie and an actual life hoedown/ Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the ground, now.”
It’s nearly too completely illustrative of the form of profession that Beyoncé has had this previous quarter-century that she ought to high the Hot 100 in the identical month of each its first and final 12 months, and with two such wildly disparate songs. There aren’t numerous apparent threads tying collectively “Say My Name” and “Texas Hold ‘Em”; they’re from completely different genres and completely different generations (clearly), with nearly no overlapping collaborators, themes and even promotional methods. The solely factor they’ve in widespread – apart from, after all, their incredible business success and top-level artistry – is the singer behind them, a performer and creator whose dedication to innovation, evolution and all-around excellence has made her the bar in opposition to which all different pop stars this century have lengthy been measured.
The greatness of Beyoncé as a pop star is each instantly apparent on its floor and worthy of in depth exploration in its vastness. You can watch her on stage for half a minute and immediately acknowledge that she’s an all-timer; her inherent mixture of dazzling magnificence, impeccable style, charming staging, otherworldly physicality and concurrently earthy and skyscraping vocals all speaks for itself. But to grasp the complete scope of her impression additionally requires a deep information of Twenty first century American pop music and tradition, and the methods through which she has dominated it, elevated it and reworked it over the previous 25 years. Few artists this era can match her in any of essentially the most crucial primary classes of pop stardom – business success, efficiency skills, crucial acclaim and accolades, {industry} affect, iconic cultural moments – and completely nobody can equal her in all of them. Even Taylor Swift, the lone artist who actually challenged Beyoncé for the highest spot on these rankings – and who does have a transparent statistical lead on Bey in lots of key classes; extra on that later – merely hasn’t been round for lengthy sufficient to have the ability to match the expansiveness of her quarter-century of dominance.
And essentially the most exceptional factor concerning the Houston-born celebrity’s greatness is how constant it’s been. She was nonetheless an adolescent managed by her father when “Say My Name” hit No. 1; she was a 42-year-old married mom of three by the point “Texas Hold ‘Em” received there – and in between the 2, there have been exactly zero moments through which Beyoncé was not *BEYONCÉ*. There aren’t any flop eras for Bey, no intervals the place she disappeared for a half-decade, no clear missteps that weren’t instantly and emphatically course-corrected. There are solely various levels of successful for over twenty years. In this sense, her closest friends this century should not different pop stars, they’re LeBron James and Serena Williams.
Blair Caldwell
Which isn’t to say there hasn’t been some drama for Beyoncé alongside the way in which. While the century began together with her already rolling commercially – “Say My Name” debuted on the final Hot 100 of 1999 – it additionally started on precarious footing for her group, who had simply swapped out half its lineup. Fans came upon concerning the lineup change when the “Name” video debuted in February 2000 with new members Farrah Franklin and Michelle Williams becoming a member of Bey and longtime buddy Kelly Rowland within the clip rather than LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett, who’d each sung and written on the tune, and who had accused Matthew Knowles – the group’s supervisor and Beyoncé’s father – of withholding earnings. Just a couple of months later, Franklin departed as effectively, leaving the group a trio.
But whereas the turmoil in Destiny’s Child made headlines and stoked behind-the-scenes gossip, it hardly slowed down the group’s business momentum. If something, it sped it up, as “Say My Name” was shortly adopted by “Jumpin’ Jumpin’,” one other high 5 Hot 100 hit whose frenzied hooks and appropriately pogoing beat pushed the group additional to R&B’s crossover forefront. In a pop period ran by larger-than-life boy bands and feminine solo supernovas, Destiny’s Child was the uncommon woman group that would maintain its personal on the highest ranges of turn-of-the-century high 40; the choruses had been that huge, the manufacturing was that cutting-edge and, after all, Beyoncé herself was that magnetic a frontwoman.
The group additionally stood out from the pack in its projection of feminist energy; whereas many TRL-era starlets launched moony-eyed ballads declaring devotion to their males, Destiny’s Child appeared way more snug singing about demanding extra from them, or not needing them in any respect. (The group wouldn’t even launch an easy love tune as a single till its remaining album.) When “Independent Women Part 1” arrived on the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack, it made for the group’s first indelible popular culture second: The tune big-upped the hit movie’s motion star triumvirate of Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz, but it surely was the group themselves who sounded just like the baddest trio within the sport. “Women” spent 11 weeks atop the Hot 100 from 2000-01, confirming the group as superstars.
“Independent Women” hadn’t even completed its chart run but when “Survivor” was launched because the title monitor and lead single from Destiny’s Child’s new LP, an impressed twist on public quipping concerning the group’s turnover being like the truth TV present of the identical title. The group turned the joking into an anthem celebrating each the trio’s perseverance and continued classiness within the face of such mockery – as a result of their mamas taught them higher than that – they usually proved that the perfect revenge resides effectively, as the only went to No. 2 on the Hot 100. Meanwhile, its guardian album debuted atop the Billboard 200, with 663,000 copies offered – dwarfing the first-week numbers posted the prior decade by R&B crossover predecessors like Boyz II Men and TLC, demonstrating how huge DC had grown over its two-year successful streak of smash hits.
Survivor additionally noticed Beyoncé taking a stronger hand within the group’s writing and producing; follow-up single “Bootylicious” was penned by the singer in response to criticism about her physique picture and ended up not solely being the group’s fourth Hot 100 No. 1, however Bey’s first (and hardly final) time including to the cultural lexicon. By the tip of the album cycle, the group was already plotting solo releases for all three members, with Beyoncé’s clearly the most-anticipated: Not solely was she the group’s most distinguished singer and most seen member, however she’d elevated her profile with a star flip because the titular femme fatale in MTV’s Bizet replace Carmen: A Hip-Hopera, and with a supporting position because the Blaxploitation-riffing Foxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers in Goldmember.
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She would truly find yourself the final of the three to make her correct LP debut. Williams and Rowland launched Heart to Yours and Simply Deep, respectively, in 2002 – whereas Rowland additionally guested on one of many 12 months’s largest hits, the sentimental Nelly duet “Dilemma.” Meanwhile, Beyoncé received off to a little bit of a false begin with Goldmember soundtrack single “Work It Out,” which paired her with ‘00s superproducers The Neptunes, however performed to none of their strengths with its stilted ‘60s throwback groove and finally missed the Hot 100 fully. Luckily for Bey, she had a hip-hop collab of her personal to return earlier than 12 months’s finish: “03 Bonnie & Clyde,” a high 5 Hot 100 hit that noticed her convincingly driving shotgun alongside the most important rapper within the sport, Jay-Z, and which helped get her again on monitor commercially in time for her belated solo bow.
And when that correct solo launch arrived in May 2003, it was a no-doubter. Arriving on an exultant Chi-Lites horn pattern and an addictive Rich Harrison-helmed bubble-funk groove, “Crazy in Love” was an apparent and instant winner. Beyoncé glided completely over the verses earlier than hitting an more and more (and fittingly) unhinged pitch on the choruses, whereas an on-top-of-the-world Jay returned the favor to his “Bonnie” by enjoying hype man (“History within the making!”) on the tune’s intro and delivering a wonderfully timed visitor verse, stoking continued rumors concerning the two of them being a real-life couple within the course of. The tune took over the summer time of 2003, spending eight weeks atop the Hot 100 and finally coming to be thought of one of many biggest pop songs of all time.
The hits stored coming from there: “Baby Boy,” a dancehall-oriented banger that includes a then-blazing Sean Paul, adopted “Crazy” to No. 1 for one more 9 weeks that autumn, with the bent-not-broken ballad “Me, Myself & I” and the Donna Summer-lifting come-on “Naughty Girl” making it 4 high 5 hits in a row from the album for the newly minted solo celebrity. All 4 smashes might be discovered on Dangerously in Love, which topped the Billboard 200 albums chart and gained greatest modern R&B album on the 2004 Grammys – one in every of 5 awards Bey took dwelling that evening. The controversial spotlight of her night got here aside from any of these wins, as she opened the awards alongside no much less a pop and soul legend than Prince, holding her personal subsequent to the Purple One for a medley mixing each of their hits, and demonstrating that the 22-year-old was already nearing the all-time pop pantheon’s internal circle.
As a lot recognition as Beyoncé was gaining for her hit singles and albums, she was turning into equally famend for such performances, which additionally included spectacular debuts in 2003 on the MTV Video Music Awards and BET Awards. Those awards exhibits additionally after all celebrated her equally putting music movies, together with a “Crazy in Love” clip that spawned three or 4 immediately iconic Beyoncé seems and a much-copied booty-pop dance to the “oh, oh” breakdown that additionally turned an early signature. All collectively, Beyoncé was our employees’s Greatest Pop Star of 2003, defining pop superstardom in a post-peak-TRL period, and serving to to maneuver high 40 away from the Euro-based pop sounds of the flip of the century to one thing funkier and extra hip-hop-based; the next 12 months, the Hot 100 could be completely dominated by Black artists.
With her solo bonafides greater than established, Bey would spend 2004 doing yet one more lap across the Billboard charts alongside Kelly and Michelle in Destiny’s Child. The group reunited for that 12 months’s Destiny Fulfilled, which noticed them embracing grittier sounds on hits just like the marching band-led “Lose My Breath” and the trap-tinged “Soldier” (that includes then-ascendant southern rappers T.I. and Lil Wayne), and enjoying devoted home companions for the primary time on the plush “Cater 2 U.” The trio’s expanded palette on the set met with optimistic reception from followers and a No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 – although even in its title, Destiny Fulfilled appeared to be telegraphing that the LP could be the group’s swan tune. And regardless of occasional reunions for dwell performances or one-off releases within the a long time since, DC has but to document its followup.
As she was turning into one of many decade’s main pop stars, Beyoncé was additionally setting her sights on correct movie stardom. She notched one other field workplace success with a supporting position in 2006’s Steve Martin-led remake of comedy basic The Pink Panther – additionally 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 time – and filming her first starring position in a theatrical launch with the Bill Condon-directed adaptation of the famed Broadway musical Dreamgirls. The movie was additionally successful, with Beyoncé scoring a Golden Globe nomination for her position as Deena Jones, frontwoman of the fictional Dreams woman group. Bey would go on to play main roles that decade as Etta James within the Chess Records story Cadillac Records and as a threatened spouse within the thriller Obsessed – although she by no means fairly turned an A-lister in movie the way in which she was in music, and has largely put performing on the backburner for the previous 15 years.
While she was filming Dreamgirls, Beyoncé’s second solo album got here collectively shortly, as she recorded for 2 weeks in relative secrecy with go-to producers like Harrison, Swizz and The Neptunes. The outcome was September 2006’s B’Day – largely impressed by her Dreamgirls music and character, and far rawer-sounding and extra aggressive than her solo debut – which debuted at No. 1 with over half 1,000,000 in first-week gross sales. The singles rollout wasn’t fairly as bulletproof as Dangerously’s, with the “Crazy”-reminiscent “Deja Vu” (additionally that includes Jay-Z) topping out at No. 4 on the Hot 100 and the livid “Ring the Alarm” peaking simply outdoors the highest 10. But any worries about underperformance had been put to mattress by third single “Irreplaceable,” an acoustic mid-tempo kiss-off cooked up with Norwegian manufacturing duo Stargate and rising singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, which topped the Hot 100 for 10 weeks and spawned two of the 12 months’s largest pop quotables in “You should not know ‘bout me” and “To the left, to the left.”
Meanwhile, Beyoncé was starting to scale up her albums, movies and dwell experiences. She launched her first deluxe version in April 2007, together with her first hyped occasion duet within the new monitor “Beautiful Liar,” a No. 3-peaking collab with fellow international celebrity Shakira. That launch was accompanied by the brand new B’Day Video Anthology Album, which included visuals for 13 of the prolonged album’s tracks – displaying an uncommon dedication to the music video at a time when the medium was at a low in its cultural forex – which prolonged the album’s lifespan on MTV and BET and laid the groundwork for future full-length visible initiatives. Also that April, she set out on her first solo headlining world tour, backed by her all-female band Suga Mama, which drew robust gross sales and critiques and established Bey as a marquee touring act. After proving herself an A-level hitmaker, Beyoncé was now additionally turning into a standard-setter in all the opposite most necessary components of pop stardom.
The subsequent 12 months, she returned with I Am… Sasha Fierce, signaling her loftier ambitions with the album’s dual-disc break up (into I Am ballads and Sasha Fierce up-tempos) and its black-and-white colour scheme. The pop-rock ballad “If I Were a Boy” was the primary single and apparent focus monitor, a show-stopping vocal showcase for Beyoncé with a ruefully double-standard-bemoaning lyric and a gender-swapping, high-concept video. But audiences extra shortly embraced the concurrently launched “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” a riotous women’-night-out singalong with a moonbounce beat co-produced by ‘00s pop&B gold-spinners The-Dream and Tricky Stewart. The tune had no actual instrumental melody, however Beyoncé’s vocal hooks got here so quick and livid that it nonetheless turned one of many late-decade’s defining hits – helped by a low-budget, hyper-kinetically choreographed video that shortly infiltrated all corners of popular culture, recreated by everybody from Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live to Liza Minnelli within the Sex and the City 2 movie.
Beyoncé additionally introduced the video to the VMAs that September together with her first of a number of all-time performances on the awards present, main a military of dancers with unstoppable vitality and jaw-dropping physicality. Unfortunately, her evening was outlined by Kanye West’s timeline-altering resolution to storm the stage throughout Taylor Swift’s first profession win (for “You Belong With Me”) to protest that “Single Ladies” ought to’ve taken the perfect feminine video trophy as an alternative – whereas a mortified Bey watched helplessly from the gang. Though the interruption outlined the awards – and a complete second in popular culture – Beyoncé was capable of finish the night on a optimistic word, as she took the highest prize of video of the 12 months for “Ladies,” after which invited Swift on stage to get the celebratory second that Kanye had beforehand overwhelmed, beginning a career-long friendship between the 2 superstars. Meanwhile, “Ladies” and the following stage crash each helped revive curiosity within the music video format and completely resuscitated the VMAs, each of which had been present process an identification disaster for years earlier than.
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Beyoncé ended the primary decade of the century at her highest degree of esteem but: I Am… earned her first Grammy nomination for album of the 12 months on the 2010 awards, and she or he’d even sung Etta James’ “At Last” at President Obama’s Inaugural Ball as his and First Lady Michelle Obama’s first dance tune in 2009. She started the ‘10s by taking her first year-long break from recording and performing – although she nonetheless snuck in an look in one other game-changing video, with Lady Gaga on the surreal crime-musical odyssey “Telephone.” When she returned in 2011, it was to a high 40 world that had primarily gone into hyperdrive, with turbo-pop and EDM having taken over radio, and even lots of her pop&B friends embracing propulsive beats and party-starting urgency.
But Beyoncé went the opposite means with it on 4, titled after her fortunate quantity (and it being her fourth solo LP), and constructed largely round a extra meditative, grownup R&B sound. Though the album turned her fourth straight to debut atop the Billboard 200, the primary two singles failed to essentially catch on within the new pop world: the Major Lazer-sampling lead single “Run the World (Girls)” proved a bit too aggressive for high 40, whereas follow-up “Best Thing I Never Had” retread previous ballad territory a bit too carefully – and this time, there was no “Irreplaceable” or “Single Ladies” to avoid wasting the day commercially. But later singles just like the ecstatically explosive “Countdown” and the chic ‘80s R&B throwback “Love on Top” caught on with followers and with critics, ending on numerous year-end lists from publications who would’ve beforehand had little curiosity in non-globe-conquering Beyoncé singles.
The album ended up her lowest-selling to that time, and her solely non-soundtrack solo launch so far to not generate a high 10 Hot 100 hit. But it got here off extra like a aware shift to a brand new part of her stardom – which made sense for the then-30-year-old performer, who had simply had her first youngster, Blue Ivy, with now-husband Jay-Z, and whose social circle included the couple residing within the White House – than an outright business disappointment. A triumphant Super Bowl halftime efficiency in February 2013 re-confirmed her peerlessness as a performer and the unassailability of her catalog, whereas additionally additional validating the 4 period with spellbinding renditions of “End of Time,” “Run the World” and an a cappella snippet of “Love on Top.” If Beyoncé had absolutely pivoted to grown-up R&B at that time and largely stopped competing with the period’s different pop megastars for mainstream consideration, it could have been comprehensible and unsurprising, and her legacy as an all-time nice would’ve nonetheless been greater than safe.
Instead, Beyoncé determined to reassert her sovereignty in a means nobody may’ve predicted. In the earliest hours of Dec. 13, 2013 – after an extended interval of relative radio silence – a full self-titled Beyoncé album unexpectedly fell from the skies, debuting on-line with no prior announcement or promotion. The shock set featured a powerful array of cutting-edge collaborators, together with a pair of rising-star visitor appearances from Drake and Frank Ocean, and one other 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 so far – plus it debuted alongside its personal full-length visible album, with movies for all 14 of its tracks. And nobody knew a factor about any of it till the order hyperlink confirmed up on their social media timelines at 12:52 on a Friday morning.
It is near-impossible to overstate the significance of Beyoncé’s shock drop. There was merely no precedent for an artist on and even close to Bey’s degree releasing any form of secret musical undertaking on an unsuspecting pop world – not to mention one this good, not to mention one with an extremely luxurious and enriching full-length visible accompaniment. Even rock greats Radiohead’s acclaimed In Rainbows, famously launched as an industry-rocking pay-what-you-want digital album in 2007, was introduced 9 days upfront of its launch; against this, followers had no cause to suspect a brand new Beyoncé LP was even an imminent proposition till it was already accessible for digital obtain. For such a completely realized undertaking by some of the well-known and adopted artists on the earth to have remained fully shrouded in confidentiality till its second of launch was mind-boggling.
More vital than the tah-dah parlor trick facet of Beyoncé’s self-titled reveal, although, was the message that the set – and its super preliminary success, bowing at No. 1 with a then-solo-career-best 617,000 first-week items regardless of simply three days of tracking-week availability – projected about the way forward for the album format. For a lot of the Twenty first century, star artists and their labels had resisted the technological developments within the {industry} that had reduce into conventional CD purchases – file-sharing, then iTunes, then streaming – within the hopes that they may by some means maintain onto the mannequin that had pushed such unimaginable gross sales numbers within the ‘90s and early ‘00s. Beyoncé was the primary album of its variety to completely embrace the brand new prospects of the digital age, producing essentially the most discuss of any 2013 pop launch by eschewing the stodginess of conventional months-long album rollouts for an method that felt exponentially extra well timed, in a means that merely wouldn’t have been doable within the CD’s golden age. The album format, more and more seen by {industry} leaders as an inconvenient means to an finish, was instantly thrilling once more. It was arguably the only most pivotal second in all of Twenty first-century pop music.
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And its {industry} impression was profound. The subsequent 12 months would see artists as huge and wide-ranging as Skrillex, U2 and D’Angelo experimenting with the sneak-drop, and by 2016, the whole music calendar was seemingly constructed round 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 on the Table all arrived that 12 months with a mini-avalanche of buzz however little or no advance discover. In a flash, Beyoncé had reoriented a singles-driven pop market across the long-player, with an album that needed to be consumed without delay, whose hit singles even sounded a lot better within the context of the entire document. Reverberations of that transformation proceed to be felt as we speak, when stars like Bad Bunny and Charli XCX can command a 12 months with out a single conventional pop radio smash, however with albums that excite followers with their cohesive full packages and unconventional promotional rollouts.
And whereas the promotion for Beyoncé’s self-titled album didn’t start till its precise late-2013 launch, it continued effectively into 2014. She closed out the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour she’d been on since early 2013 with European dates that spring, earlier than heading out just some months later with hubby Jay-Z on the On the Run co-headlining trek, taking her to stadiums for the primary time. A few months later, she dropped the Nicki Minaj-featuring remix to Beyoncé spotlight “Flawless,” an internet-stopping launch whose lack of an official streaming or digital launch till the set’s “Platinum Edition” reissue at 12 months’s finish meant its chart place by no means mirrored its huge cultural import – although that version did spawn a medium-sized chart hit within the No. 13-peaking “7/11,” which additionally turned a fan favourite for its rambunctious hotel-set music video.
Beyoncé commemorated the period together with her Video Vanguard efficiency on the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, rejecting the normal hits medley efficiency that has come to accompany the award in favor of an awe-inspiring 16-minute run by all 14 of the self-titled’s authentic tracks. That mini-set peaked with a efficiency of the unique “Flawless,” which noticed Bey standing in entrance of lingering “FEMINIST” textual content on the display behind her – quoted from a mid-song pattern of a speech on the phrase’s that means by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – turning into a signature picture of mid-’10s popular culture, and a major second within the development of gender discourse in pop music and tradition. For the whole of her accomplishments and her centrality to that 12 months’s pop music – even in releases she wasn’t straight concerned in – we named Beyoncé the Greatest Pop Star of 2014, making her the one two-time winner of the yearly honor to area out her two Ws a decade aside. The Queen was as soon as once more the Queen.
Though the 12 months was filled with main victories for Beyoncé, she was additionally concerned in one other three-star drama through which she was once more the onlooker. That May, TMZ posted silent safety footage from a Manhattan resort through which Bey, Jay-Z and Solange entered an elevator following a Met Gala after-party, and Solange furiously attacked Jay for unclear causes, earlier than being restrained by a safety guard. Rumors would fly that the incident needed to do with an incident of Jay-Z proving untrue to his celebrity spouse, and although Bey largely dismissed the mess on the “Flawless” remix (“Of course typically s–t goes down when there’s a billion {dollars} on an elevator”), reminiscence of it caught as a notable second of messiness for the normally tidy cultural dominance of the Knowles-Carter clan.
Catharsis would are available 2016, as Beyoncé would reply to each the countless gossip and the whole Year of the Event Release together with her sixth solo album Lemonade. But first, the set was preceded in February by the discharge of her booming, catchphrase-strewn “Formation” single as an unique to then-new streaming service TIDAL, although the video obtained much more consideration than the tune for its revolutionary staging and choreography, its New Orleans-evocative (although Pasadena-shot) setting and Black Lives Matter-inspired imagery. (The latter half would find yourself getting severe backlash – and an eventual boycott – from conservatives and cops who felt her message to be anti-police; Bey responded by promoting #BoycottBeyonce merch.) Bey would convey the tune to the Super Bowl 50 halftime present the subsequent day, throughout a set ostensibly headlined by Coldplay, and likewise introduced the Formation World Tour in a business following the efficiency – the first-ever stadium tour to be headlined by a feminine artist, extremely.
The optimistic response to “Formation” and its accompanying tour set the stage for Lemonade, which arrived with the 12 months’s largest launch evening, because it premiered in visible album format on HBO that April. The swaggering, roots-celebrating “Formation” turned out to be one thing of a purple herring for the bigger set, which as an alternative centered on the singer-songwriter’s emotions of harm, betrayal and anger in making an attempt to course of a associate’s dishonest – and her eventual forgiveness on the trail to reconciliation – all largely assumed, after all, to be an autobiographical account of Jay-Z’s long-rumored infidelity. The album and accompanying movie drew glowing critiques for its uncooked emotional content material, its genre-hopping tracklist – which noticed Bey collaborate with Jack White on the scuzzy “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” The Weeknd on the Isaac Hayes-sampling “6 Inch” and finally even The Chicks on a dwell model of the stomping nation warning “Daddy Lessons” – and its gorgeous coherence as her first true idea album. Largely thought of her magnum opus as we speak, and an everlasting fan favourite for displaying a extra susceptible aspect of the pop superhero, Lemonade cemented Beyoncé as one of many nice albums artists of her technology.
Lemonade was additionally a powerful business success, posting 653,000 items in its first week and ending at No. 4 on the 2016 Year-End Billboard 200. But for the second straight album, the chart peaks of the set’s hits had been improperly reflective of their total impression: the album being stored as a TIDAL unique throughout its authentic run depressed its streaming numbers, whereas high 40 radio – then largely fixated on the mid-tempo EDM-pop of The Chainsmokers and Justin Bieber’s Purpose period – largely ignored the set, with the No. 10 bow of “Formation” proving the period’s highest chart peak. Still, visuals like Beyoncé lounging in a throne-like chair subsequent to a twerking Serena Williams within the “Sorry” clip and wielding a baseball bat whereas strutting down the road in a yellow costume in “Hold Up” turned unforgettable mid-’10s snapshot photographs, whereas lyrical hooks throughout the album like “He higher name Becky with the great hair” and “I received scorching sauce in my bag, swag” proved majorly memeable. Lemonade additional proved that basic hit singles had been now not a prerequisite in 2010s pop for driving the tradition: As Bey herself boasted in “Formation,” “You know you that b–ch whenever you trigger all this dialog.”
Despite the album’s mixture of unanimous crucial reward and super business and cultural success, one prize continued to elude Beyoncé: the album of the 12 months Grammy. She had understandably misplaced on I Am… Sasha Fierce to Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Fearless, and extra surprisingly took a backseat to alt-rocker Beck for his somber Morning Light in 2015, when Beyoncé was additionally nominated. (Kanye was captured approaching the Grammys stage after the latter snub, although he fortunately thought higher of it that point.) Lemonade made her 0 for 3 within the class when the award as an alternative went to Adele in 2017 – who, to be truthful, had simply offered a document 3.38 million items of her 25 album in a single week. Nonetheless, many bemoaned Bey’s repeatedly being neglected within the class, together with Adele herself, who referred to as Beyoncé “my artist of my life” and raved about Lemonade throughout her tearful acceptance speech.
Beyoncé took most of 2017 off after turning into pregnant with twins Rumi and Sir – together with her Instagram posts first saying her being pregnant after which sharing her first picture together with her newborns shortly turning into the first- and second-most favored posts within the app’s historical past on the time. She had been imagined to headline that 12 months’s Coachella, however as an alternative used the 2018 pageant to make her return to dwell efficiency. With a later-stated need to convey “our tradition to Coachella,” Beyoncé’s debut on the pageant – as the primary Black feminine headliner in its 20 years – served as one thing of a historical past lesson by its depth of musical references, delivered with the assistance of a marching band and majorette dancers, within the HBCU custom. The efficiency drew such a rapturous response – not simply from these in attendance, however from tens of millions across the globe live-streaming the much-anticipated efficiency – that Bey later launched it as each a Netflix particular and a dwell album (each titled Homecoming), with the latter reaching the Billboard 200’s high 5 and turning into one of many 12 months’s top-reviewed releases.
At the flip of the last decade, Beyoncé launched into one other bold multipart, multimedia undertaking diving into the roots of her Blackness – this time honoring the artists and sounds of Africa, first together with her album The Lion King: The Gift, a Bey-led soundtrack to the 2019 movie remake of The Lion King through 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 additional in showcasing the artists themselves: Afrobeats and Afropop main lights like Mr. Eazi, Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tiwa Savage and Yemi Alade all featured on the set. Most additionally appeared in Black Is King, the Bey-conceptualized accompanying 2020 Disney+ movie, a luxurious show of African-derived style, model, artwork and dance offered by the lens of a Lion King-esque story of a younger African prince reclaiming his identification and his pleasure. The movie drew minor blowback for some perceived “Wakandafication” of Africa, however way more reward for its staggering visuals and deeply felt connection to the continent portrayed.
Though her work within the again half of the 2010s established Beyoncé as each a top-flight visible storyteller and a dedicated conduit and explorer of Black tradition inside mainstream areas – in ways in which no different Twenty first century star had even tried – her main pop moments had been turning into a bit fewer and farther between. But regardless that she had no big crossover singles as a lead artist through the interval, she nonetheless discovered her means onto such hits: In late 2017, she appeared on each a duet model of Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect,” boosting that tune 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 tune to No. 3. In 2020, she additionally proved she may nonetheless dangle with the subsequent technology of Houston stars by blessing the remix to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” convincingly buying and selling bars with the star MC and once more rocketing the tune to the Hot 100’s apex.
Though she had dropped quite a lot of full-length initiatives within the meantime – together with 2018’s Everything Is Love team-up with Jay-Z, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and closed the chapter on their second of disaster as a pair – by 2022, Beyoncé nonetheless hadn’t launched a correct solo follow-up to 2016’s Lemonade. That modified with the July unveiling of Renaissance, a deliberate first installment in a “three-act undertaking,” with the primary half meant to delve into the wealthy historical past of membership music and ballroom tradition. The set was impressed by Beyoncé’s late cousin (identified to her as “Uncle Johnny”) who’d launched her to a lot of the tradition, and by a need to rejoice the world going “again outdoors,” as she acknowledged in lead single “Break My Soul,” following the societal shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
By 2022, followers thought they knew what to anticipate from a Beyoncé new album rollout: a shock launch with no advance singles or promotion, finally paired with a full-length visible accompaniment. This time, she swerved once more by returning to a extra conventional method: Renaissance was publicized over a month upfront in a Vogue June cowl story, with “Break My Soul” introduced after which launched as an advance single lower than every week later. The album arrived in July to but extra rave critiques and one other bow atop the Billboard 200, with critics and followers delighting within the set’s DJ set-like pacing and structuring, its boundless dancefloor vitality and its deep internet of cultural and musical references. “Soul” additionally topped the Hot 100, and second single “Cuff It” turned Bey’s first correct solo smash of the TikTook period, because the ebullient disco-pop jam (with writing from style legend Nile Rodgers) went viral over the course of late 2022 and early 2023, finally turning into the longest-running Hot 100 solo hit of her profession.
As of mid-2023, a lot to its shock, the Bey Hive nonetheless hadn’t gotten the anticipated visible accompaniment to Renaissance. What they received was one thing higher: the Renaissance World Tour, Bey’s wildly profitable first post-pandemic international trek, which noticed her performing the brand new album in its entirety, whereas additionally integrating myriad different catalog jams into its club-like circulation. Thanks once more to TikTook and different social media, the tour made headlines at nearly each cease, as followers and retailers famous outfit modifications, tweaks to lyrics (“Badu Badu Badu Badu”) and superstar attendees, whereas daughter Blue Ivy – by then a Grammy winner for her look on The Gift’s “Brown Skin Girl” – made her warmly obtained stage debut, dancing to “My Power” and “Black Parade” through the present. The “mute problem,” a nightly second through which the whole stadium was meant to hush upon Beyoncé’s “all people on mute” supply from “Energy,” additionally commonly went viral for its numerous successes and failures. By the tip of it, followers had (largely) stopped asking for the movies: “You are the visible, child,” Bey informed her Louisville crowd that July.
There could be no six-year watch for the Renaissance follow-up: A Verizon business airing through the 2024 Super Bowl trumpeted Beyoncé’s return in February, with “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” debuting that evening as the primary tastes of Cowboy Carter, Bey’s long-rumored full-length nation exploration. Though she would quickly make clear, “This ain’t a rustic album. This is a BEYONCÉ album,” she hinted closely that the LP was impressed by her “Daddy Lessons” efficiency alongside the Chicks on the 2016 CMA Awards, which met big reward, but additionally some backlash criticizing her inclusion on the ceremonies. The full album was a rip-roaring journey by the style’s historical past and the way Beyoncé noticed herself becoming into (and out of) it, and one other chart-topping success. The largest pop impression of Cowboy Carter, nonetheless, got here from visitor artist Shaboozey, who springboarded from his two appearances into crossover stardom along with his record-tying 19-week Hot 100 No. 1 “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” neatly demonstrating how Beyoncé at present stands as a very powerful hyperlink between pop’s previous and its future.
The longevity of Beyoncé stays regularly awe-inspiring. In 2023, a full 20 years after her first 12 months of being awarded Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star standing, she completed No. 3 in our yearly rating: an endurance at pop’s forefront that not even solo Michael Jackson, our Greatest Pop Star of 1983 and Bey’s closest Twentieth-century predecessor, can rightly declare. At a time when most of her pop friends – even the perfect ones – have both retired from music, pale from the limelight or just contented themselves with recreating previous glories, Beyoncé stays steadfastly dedicated to pushing ahead. She doesn’t chase developments or youth; even when collaborating with newer artists, she is ready to meet them on widespread floor that doesn’t lead to both celebration being compromised or contorted. Instead, she chases greatness: absolutely realized creative works that may add not solely to her legacy, however to the tradition and to the historical past of fashionable music.
It just isn’t a coincidence that previously three years, dialogue of pop music at its highest ranges of success and achievement has typically boiled all the way down to a dialogue of two artists: Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Partly this is because of a quirk of synched-up scheduling: Both pop icons launched much-anticipated new albums within the second half of 2022 and the primary half of 2024, and went on globe-conquering world excursions (with field office-besting movie accompaniments) in between them. Partly this is because of their real-life friendship, with each attending one another’s movie premieres in 2023 and persevering with to assist one different at the same time as they’re invariably pitted in opposition to one another (even by the way, as on lists like this one). But largely, it’s as a result of over these years, Taylor has reached the extent of pop star greatness – with the industry-shaking impression of her Taylor’s Version re-recordings and her Eras Tour, with the super business achievements of Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, together with her unprecedented total cultural ubiquity – that beforehand, solely Beyoncé may actually lay declare to over the previous 25 years.
If you go by the sheer numbers, Taylor would simply high this checklist — and she’s going to undoubtedly reign on most of the chart-based quarter-century rankings we’ll publish in 2025. Even together with her late begin, she has extra 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 another artist this century can equal. She has seven million-selling first weeks, together with for each 1989 *and* 1989 (Taylor’s Version), in addition to an unthinkable 2.61 million for this 12 months’s Poets; Bey has by no means moved 1,000,000 items in every week. Poets and Cowboy Carter are each up for album of the 12 months on the 2025 Grammys, however regardless of Beyoncé now being essentially the most awarded artist within the present’s historical past, Taylor goes for her record-extending fifth AOTY win and Bey nonetheless her first. The Eras Tour numbers haven’t but been formally reported to Billboard Boxscore, however the remaining grosses are anticipated to dwarf not solely the Renaissance World Tour, however each different tour in music historical past. In 2023, when Beyoncé was our employees’s No. 3 Greatest Pop Star, our No. 1 was Taylor Swift – her third win, the one artist with that many – and the hole between her and the remainder of the pack was the most important it’s been within the historical past of this undertaking. There is zero query who the most important pop star on the earth is true now, and anybody who needed to make the case for her because the century’s biggest would have a good and cheap argument with which to take action.
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But whenever you’re speaking about greatness, and whenever you’re speaking about greatness for the Twenty first century particularly, nobody has an extended or fuller monitor document than Beyoncé. It is insanely spectacular that Taylor has even made it a dialogue after lacking the entire first quarter of the interval, however solely Beyoncé has spent the whole thing of the final 25 years exemplifying greatness in each kind possible. With each album, each single, each music video, each dwell efficiency, each photograph shoot and promo marketing campaign and launch technique during the last quarter-century, she has pursued excellence completely and relentlessly, and the variety of instances the place she’s notably fallen quick in that pursuit doesn’t even method double digits. Her greatness is so wide-ranging and expansive that we simply ranked the 100 moments this century that greatest show it, and we nonetheless had one other 50-plus in reserve that it broke our hearts to have to depart on the reducing room ground. There’s simply no different artist this century – and possibly solely a pair within the earlier one – with a full 20-plus-year catalog of nice moments like that.
Again, it’s laborious not to attract the parallel with somebody like LeBron James: Yes, as he ages into his 40s, gamers have handed and can proceed to move him when it comes to their real-time accomplishments. But so long as LeBron is enjoying at an especially excessive degree, he can be thought of and handled as the best – notably by different gamers – for the breadth of who he’s and what he’s constantly executed within the sport for many years now. Similarly, Beyoncé merely stays the usual for pop stardom this century, particularly for individuals who got here of age together with her greatness as a given; ask the opposite 24 pop stars on this checklist who the best pop star of the century is and it could be shocking if she was not the reply for almost all of them. She’s been *BEYONCÉ* for 25 years now, and as she continues to problem herself (and by extension, the remainder of the pop world) to search out new and alternative ways to be outline greatness, it doesn’t appear to be she’s going to cease being *BEYONCÉ* anytime quickly. Better say her title.
THE COMPLETE LIST:
Honorable Mentions
25. Katy Perry
24. Ed Sheeran
23. Bad Bunny
22. One Direction
21. Lil Wayne
20. Bruno Mars
19. BTS
18. The Weeknd
17. Shakira
16. Jay-Z
15. Miley Cyrus
14. Justin Timberlake
13. Nicki Minaj
12. Eminem
11. Usher
10. Adele
9. Ariana Grande
8. Justin Bieber
7. Kanye West
6. Britney Spears
5. Lady Gaga
4. Drake
3. Rihanna
2. Taylor Swift
1. Beyoncé
