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6 - Lady Gaga

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

6 - Britney Spears

Few came, saw, and conquered global super stardom quite like Britney Spears. At the turn of the millennium, the teen queen captured the hearts of millions with her pop hits — and, unknowingly, set a business model that would carry for decades to come. But even when record labels tried to replicate the magic, they fell short, because it was largely Spears incorporating her creativity and personality into her career that made the Mississippi-born talent such a unique force. As the calendar changed centuries, no one held a tighter grip on pop’s new golden age than Britney, who became an icon with a reliable talent for creating zeitgeist-y moments — years before social media even existed.

7 - Kanye West

It’s damn near impossible to imagine a single person on the planet who doesn’t know Kanye’s name. For a solid 20 years now, the monocultural figure has been in headlines on a weekly basis – sometimes daily, sometimes hourly – for just about every reason an artist can be. He’s been attached to stories about every kind of commercial and critical achievement: chart-topping singles and albums, best-of year-end and decade-end list placements, award wins and losses – even ones that weren’t his own. He’s also been at the center of celebrity weddings, billion-dollar business dealings, friendships and feuds with plenty of the other most famous people of the 21st century; one sitting U.S. president publicly thanked him for his “very cool” service, another called him a jackass.

8 - Justin Bieber

Even “superstar” feels like an understatement. With 23 Grammy nominations (and two wins), eight No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, eight Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping songs, 33 Guinness World Records, 26 Billboard Music Awards, four RIAA-certified diamond records and an estimated 150 million records sold over the course of his career, 30-year-old Bieber has been a crucial part of the pop landscape for more than a decade, setting a new standard for pop artists to come by being a trailblazer in using social media to his advantage, without the need for radio or MTV backing to cross over to mainstream success.

9 - Ariana Grande

It’s easy to view Ariana Grande’s rise to the highest echelons of pop stardom as a classic, uncomplicated success story within the music business. The child-actor-turned-pop-sensation route is well-trodden, after all, and at first glance, the 31-year-old singer-songwriter appears to be yet another benefactor of that industry pipeline.

10 - Adele

By the year 2010, Adele was already a Grammy-winning global hitmaker, so you couldn’t really say she came out of nowhere. But during a period of pop music that was quintessentially BIG – in sound, in scope, in ambition and in commercial returns – for the biggest artist by a near-exponential magnitude to turn out to be the British singer-songwriter with all the weepy breakup ballads was borderline-unthinkable, even as it was becoming an increasingly obvious reality. And for her to get even bigger from there, until she was putting up stats no other pop phenomenon had achieved before or has matched since – even as the music industry around her was supposedly in failing health – remains dizzying to think about a decade

11 - Usher

Not many artists can say they’ve made the successful transition from teen sensation to adult superstar. It’s an exclusive club whose membership brings to mind all-time greats like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift… and then there’s Usher, baby: the singing, dancing triple-threat in the Braves hat and the U chain.

12 - Eminem

Ironically, it was Eminem’s extremely anti-pop energy in his early days that made him the perfect pop star for the moment. The early ’90s had been largely been defined by Seattle-based grunge and L.A.-based G-funk, but by the late ’90s, those genres had largely run their course in the mainstream, and their sonic and thematic heaviness was largely replaced by upbeat, kid-friendly, occasionally brilliant megapop that nonetheless left a lot of still-pissed-off young folks desperate for a darker, more skeptical alternative. Out of that hunger came the rise of rap-rockers like Korn and Limp Bizkit, as well as the inner-turmoil-driven hip-hop of DMX — all of whom would be present at Woodstock ’99, a bad-vibes festival of such historic proportions that the negative energy ultimately manifested in literal flames that engulfed much of the fest. The world was clearly ready for a rapper like Eminem, a (peroxide) blond-haired, blue-eyed, angry young white man who combined the youth-galvanizing outsider appeal of the nu-metalers with the intensely personal rhymes of DMX, also with a healthy dose of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s bratty humor and cultural commentary mixed in.

13 - Nicki Minaj

Though she came to passionately rep Southside Jamaica, Queens (and it’s crazy!) after moving there at the age of five, the artist born Onika Tanya Maraj was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 1982. The eldest daughter of four children, Minaj’s birthplace and stomping grounds immediately situate her at the origins of hip-hop, the endlessly influential artform that sprung out of 1970s New York thanks to the city’s rich combination of African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Latin American cultures. And just as so much of hip-hop has grappled (and continues to grapple) with the American dream and its dueling luster and infeasibility, so has Minaj throughout her career — both inside and outside of her music.

14 - Justin Timberlake

Justin Timberlake came into the 21st century as pop’s golden child. From his scene-stealing time as the baby bro of *NSYNC at the turn of the century, to his one-two-three punch of a solo start with the hit-making Justified in 2002, gliding into the cutting-edge FutureSex/LoveSounds in 2006, and rounding out a decade-plus of pop supremacy with the glossy two-part 20/20 Experience in 2013, it began to seem like no amount of time off from music (or even a globally televised Super Bowl disaster) could kill his vibe. And while that golden touch has lost a bit of its sheen in the past few years – as Timberlake’s commercially dominant streak tapered to an end – his chokehold on pop culture for those 15 years can’t be overstated.

15 - Miley Cyrus

From eager Disney Channel prodigy to unruly pop outlaw, freewheeling genre experimenter and mature modern hitmaker, Cyrus’ knack for earnest reinvention has sustained her through all the peaks and valleys of her career. With no shortage of chart hits and even more iconic culture-shocking moments, she’s endured as one of the century’s most significant pop stars – because no matter what style she’s trying out, at the end of the day, she’s always still just being Miley.

16 - Jay-Z

The closest thing hip-hop has to the Porsche 911 is Brooklyn’s own Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. Throughout his storied three-decade career, Jay-Z never reached the commercial heights of some of his contemporaries but, much like the 911, he represented the platonic ideal of what a rapper should and could be – including as a crossover star, who was able to have major hits and top 40-level success without ever really changing who he was or sounding like he was actively chasing any of it.

17 - Shakira

At the dawn of the 21st century, Shakira not only emerged as a global musical force, but reshaped how Latin artists crossed into the mainstream, and thrived there. As the millennium turned, the concept of a Latin pop artist dominating worldwide charts in two languages was more aspirational than realistic. This was despite some crossover successes seen in the late ’90s — artists like Jennifer Lopez sang primarily in English, and only a few, such as Selena and Ricky Martin, made significant impacts while performing extensively in Spanish. Yet, Shakira artfully bridged this gap: Blending her Colombian roots with a sharp pop sensibility, she broke through linguistic barriers and set the stage for the breakthroughs enjoyed by non-English speaking artists to follow.

18 - The Weeknd

About a dozen years ago, nobody would’ve believed the hedonistic, alt-R&B, then-cult figure known as The Weeknd would become one of the 21st century’s most decorated and durable pop artists, dominating both the Billboard charts and the world’s biggest stadiums. Global super stardom might not have seemed immediately on the horizon upon his 2011 mixtape arrival, but his ability to carve his own path in R&B before successfully switching lanes to pop has made his journey one of the most fascinating ones to follow this century.

19 - BTS

When you think of what it takes for a group to become pop stars, imagine having seven individual talents who can each do it all well: sing, rap, dance, and amass a love and fandom that even some of the biggest pop stars could only dream of. That’s what you have with BTS, who crashed through every door of what it takes to be a successful pop act and expanded that with a scope never quite seen before. The group has broken through ceilings for boy bands, K-pop and South Korean artists in general, all while creating a meaningful community that is continually inspired by BTS’ message of positivity, love and connection.

20 - Bruno Mars

Before Bruno Mars became synonymous with near-flawless Grammy track records and surefire Billboard Hot 100 smashes, the 21st century’s preeminent old-school musical showman was cutting his teeth in the pop songwriting trenches. By racking up hits and placements across pop and R&B on both sides of the pond, Mars set a sturdy foundation for one of the most towering male pop careers of the 21st century.

21 - Lil Wayne

Once Wayne invaded the “Best Rapper Alive” discussion in the mid-’00s, he began cementing his status as a commercial titan even beyond hip-hop. Everyone from Enrique Iglesias to Shakira wanted a piece of Weezy, whose grill-bearing smile became unavoidable in pop culture and led to him defining an era of hip-hop during a time where rap essentially became interchangeable with pop, on its way to emerging as music’s most-consumed genre. Oh, and he introduced the world to Drake and Nicki Minaj under his Young Money imprint, who would go on to be even more dominant than him within pop music in the decade to follow.

22 - One Direction

One Direction’s ascent to global stardom proved that the boy band archetype could still thrive in the 21st century, albeit in a new and distinctly modern way. In just five years, 1D released five albums that brought uptempo British pop-rock to the States and laid the foundation for today’s international pop groups. A new online community, “stan Twitter,” rallied around the group, and their superfans, called “Directioners,” helped their idols achieve astronomical mainstream success, changing fan-to-fan communication and fan-to-artist relationships forever.

23 - Bad Bunny

And then came Bad Bunny. The Puerto Rican artist, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, didn’t transform global pop music overnight, but over the course of his six-year rise to dominance, he infiltrated the mainstream like no other Spanish-speaking artist — or really any other foreign-language artist of any kind — had before. That’s because Bad Bunny not only established himself as one of the most reliable hitmakers on the planet (and in the United States specifically), but he also became one of the most recognizable faces and personalities in pop culture at large, and he did so seemingly without making any sort of artistic concessions: not to radio, not to trends, and certainly not to the English-speaking world.

24 - Ed Sheeran

…the scale of Ed Sheeran’s 21st century success is even more impressive. In a pop age where singer-songwriters generally bump against their commercial ceiling relatively early in their evolution, this red-headed kid from Halifax kept soaring higher and higher, eventually reaching a space where his longevity, global appeal, influence and multi-quadrant hits allowed him to stand alone. He used to be a teen busking on the streets of London; now, Sheeran often finds himself in the center of 80,000 people, an acoustic strapped to his shoulder, no one and nothing else in his vicinity. And considering everything he’s done, he doesn’t even look that out of place.

25 - Katy Perry

For anyone who lived through her commercial peak, Katy Perry will always be one of the names most synonymous with pop music. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but perhaps the biggest is that few performers of the last 25 years have felt as committed to maxing out top 40 supe om at its biggest, brightest and best: When Katy Perry ruled the mainstream at the turn of the 2010s, it felt like she was wringing every ounce of potential from her albums, singles, videos, live performances, TV appearances, fashion and branding choices and general public persona. It was pop as the most legendary icons of early MTV once envisioned it – and perhaps unsurprisingly, it matched their success in ways no other artist this century has managed.

Honorable Mentions:
50 Cent
Alicia Keys
Billie Eilish
Cardi B
Carrie Underwood
Chris Brown
Christina Aguilera
Doja Cat
Dua Lipa
Future
Jennifer Lopez
Kelly Clarkson
Kendrick Lamar
Kesha
Lana Del Rey
Lorde
Maroon 5
Megan Thee Stallion
Missy Elliott
Nelly
Olivia Rodrigo
P!nk
Post Malone
Sean Paul
SZA

The list will cover singers, rappers, and groups.

Who do you think will be on the list?

I think Drake and The Weeknd are probably a lock for 2010s artists, wouldn’t be surprised if Drake is #1.

All I know is, if The Weeknd gets snubbed from this list, we riot.

damn theyre gonna take a whole 4 months to reveal the list?

Taylor is probably an unfortunate surefire lock for #1 though

Chris Brown honorable mention lmaoooo

Weeknd
Drake
Beyoncé
Ariana Grande
Bruno Mars
Rihanna
Taylor Swift
Ed Sheeran
Miley Cyrus
Adele
Justin Bieber

Lorde being an honourable mention 👎

There’s no way he’s not lol, if he wasn’t on the HM list he’s definitely included in the main list

The article gives reasons

50, Chris, Lana, Lorde and Missy honorable mentions

25 is a small number. interested to see the final list.

He gets snubbed from every list like this smh

Obv drake gonns be number 1

I bet he will be

4 months to drop a list

ass

What happened to keep making me dance waving my hand

if Ye isnt number 1 list is invalid

Kelly Clarkson, Future, Nelly, Missy......I'll pass on this article

Drake
Adele
Eminem
Bruno Mars
Taylor
Lady Gaga
Justin Bieber
Lil Wayne
Justin Timberlake
Imagine Dragons

The actual list better be good with some of these HMs lmao

drake

Sorry guys; I forgot to link the article. The article gives a reason why they’re not included in the main list

billboard.com/lists/best-pop-stars-21st-century-honorable-mentions

Ye better be on there

Drake and Taylor most likely top 3

It would be bold if they had MJ on the list.

Weeknd
Drake
Pitbull
Beyoncé
Ariana Grande
Bruno Mars
Rihanna
Taylor Swift
Katy Perry
Ed Sheeran
Britney Spears
Miley Cyrus
Harry Styles
Kanye West
Lady Gaga
Adele
Justin Bieber

7 more