Billboard’s modern era of ranking singles and albums began in the mid 1950s. The whole basis of their existence has been to statistically rank songs and albums based on sales, airplay, and (now) streaming. What they do has generally made sense. Not any more.
Now, after all these decades of measurements, they suddenly decided to use the opinion of their staff to name the Top Pop Star of this century. Pretty much anyone could tell you who the Top Pop Star is, but Billboard decided to go with someone else, Beyoncé.
On the surface, she’s not a totally unreasonable choice. She is talented, and has a lot of Grammy Awards. But, the choice is actually ludicrous, based on Billboard’s own measuring. It was just five years ago (November of 2019) when Billboard published their list of the Top Artists Of All Time.
Notice who is not in the top 30 artists, even though we were 19 years into the new century…Beyoncé. Now check who is the only 21st Century artist in the top ten…Taylor Swift.
So what has Beyoncé done in the past five years to make this “giant leap for mankind”? She has released two albums, and both made it to number one on Billboard’s Top 200 Chart.
What has Taylor Swift done in those same five years? She has released eight number one albums. Each of those albums sold more copies than both of Beyoncés albums put together. Swift also had the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, over 2-Billion dollars, which more than doubles the next closest tour (Elton John), and four times larger than Beyoncé’s latest tour. Swift also released a concert movie that grossed over 261-million-dollars (Beyoncé’s concert film did less than one-fifth that). During this century, Swift has won the Grammy for Album Of The Year a record four times. Beyoncé has never won it, even when Swift didn’t have an album in contention.
For a second, imagine if it was Beyoncé who had all the records, and Swift the lesser statistics. What would the reaction be if Beyoncé was then snubbed?
In an historical and statistical context, Taylor Swift has probably moved into second place all-time behind The Beatles. She has the second most weeks at #1 on the album chart (after The Beatles). She is the first artist to ever have the Top 10 singles, and now the Top 14 singles. She had five of the Top 10 best-selling albums last year.
The point isn’t simply that Taylor Swift has left everyone else in the dust this century, it’s that Billboard totally ignored their own measurement system to simply give a staff opinion. If the staff had been made up of different people, it likely would have been someone else who was chosen.
For instance, it’s obvious that The Beatles were the top artists of the 20th Century, but a small group of people might choose the Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac, or Michael Jackson, or Elvis Presley, or Pink Floyd. However, it would still be a fact that The Beatles were the top artists of that century. Just like it’s true that Taylor Swift is obviously the top artist of this century.
And Billboard wasn’t done with using their staff opinion over statistical reality. They named the Top Pop Stars of 2024. Kendrick Lamar was named #1, Sabrina Carpenter #2, and Taylor Swift #3. It was a completely unnecessary list, because…
Just prior to the staff releasing that list, there was the Billboard Awards show for 2024. These awards are based on how the artists actually performed on the charts. We can guess the big winner. Taylor Swift won ten awards. Top Artist, Top Album, Top Album Artist, Top Singles Artist, Top Singles Songwriter, Top Streaming Artist, Top Radio Artist, Top Female Artist, Top Global Artist, & Top Global Artist (excluding U.S.). So, naturally the staff ignored the fact she had just won their own Top Artist for 2024 award, and put Swift at #3. By the way, Kendrick Lamar won one 2024 Billboard award, Best Rap Song, not exactly a dominant year.
This is so crazy. It’s the same as if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences awarded the Oscar for Best Picture, and a couple weeks later the staff of the Academy decided another film should be named Best Picture.
It’s entirely possible that Swift’s massive popularity is getting tiresome for some people, but it seems unfair for Billboard to ignore their entire reason for existence to start offering opinions that contradict their own work. We have plenty of awards based on opinions, like The Grammy Awards, so Billboard would be best served by providing winners based on their own statistical formulas (using the millions & millions of people who vote with their money and their time), not the whims of staff members. Billboard’s name and reputation shouldn’t even be attached to this.
If Billboard doesn’t stop this nonsense, they might as well quit gathering sales, airplay, and streaming information, and just let their staff fill out the charts however they want.