Taylor Swift wasn’t named the Top Artist of the 21st Century, she earned it by her sales, airplay, and streaming. Any writer or magazine can choose their top artist, but only one artist can actually be the top artist in accordance with all the performance data available.
Billboard gathered all the statistics from how artists performed on their album and singles charts over the last 25 years. It’s likely the statistics show that no one was even close. Just five years ago, Swift was the number eight artist of all time.. The artist who is number two this century is Drake. He was only at number sixteen five years ago. Since that time, Taylor Swift has had another eight #1 albums. Drake has had three…commendable…but obviously not competitive with Swift.
Here’s how the artists ranked five years ago (November of 2019) when Billboard published their list of the Top Artists Of All Time.
You can see where four of the top five artists on the new 21st Century list ranked in 2019 among the “all time” artists.
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 all of the Top 10 singles at one time, and now the Top 14 singles. She has dominated the album charts in recent years in record-setting numbers.
Extra: An example of her dominance is that Taylor Swift had 25% of the Top 20 albums last year.
And take a look at vinyl sales since they started measuring them again in 1991.
Taylor Swift simply dominates like no other artist. The top five, and seven of the top eight in first week vinyl album sales. She is so obviously the #1 artist of this century. No one else is close.