Billboard Staff’s 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 (Full List)

ADDISON RAE

TheirYearinPop:In 2025, Addison Rae solidified herself as force in the pop world. After kicking off the year with “High Fashion” and an appearance during Arca’s Coachella set, the former TikTok star released her eponymous debut studio album on June 6. Theacclaimedalbum reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the Hot 100 hits “Headphones On” (No. 87) and “Fame Is a Gun” (No. 73), the latter of which recently re-entered the chart several months post-release. She supported the album with aBillboardcoverand a44-date headlining tour, following that up with an appearance inMonster:TheEdGeinStory, the third installment of Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-winning Netflix true crime anthology. By the end of the year, Addison officially became a Grammy-nominated artist, picking up a nod for best new artist.

WhyNotTop10?Addison made impressive inroads, but she’s still lacking a true breakthrough hit.

ARIANA GRANDE

Their Year in Pop:Though she came up short at the 2025 Academy Awards, where she was nominated for best supporting actress forWicked, Ariana Grandereturned to the topof the Billboard 200 after releasing theBrighter Days Aheaddeluxe edition of her 2024Eternal SunshineLP in February which arrived alongside a short film thattook home video of the yearat September’s MTV Video Music Awards.Brighter Days Aheadaddedsix new tracksto the Grammy-nominated album, including the Global 200 No. 7 hit “Twilight Zone.” Grande also announced her upcomingEternal Sunshine Tour, which will visit arenas across Europe and North America in 2026. By Thanksgiving,Wicked: For Goodearned the highest global and domesticopening weekendsfor a Broadway adaptation, and secured back-to-back supporting actress nominations for Grande at the Critics’ Choice Awards, Golden Globes and Actor Awards. The accompanying soundtrack reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, tying the peak of its predecessor — which also earned Grande two 2026 Grammy nods, including best pop duo/group performance for her and Cynthia Erivo’s “Defying Gravity.”

Why Not Top 10?It was a close call, but Ariana felt more musically dominant during the first part of theEternal SunshineandWickedcyclesin 2024.

Read about all 10 of our Honorable Mention picks for 2024 here.

Listen to our podcast about all 10 Honorable Mention picks here with YouTuber Todd in the Shadows.

It was fitting, perhaps, that Olivia Dean’s 2025 would kick off with an original song for the Renée Zellweger-starring romcomBridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.The London-born BRIT School graduate’s 2023 debut albumMessywas about the chaos – and liberating freedom – of rebuilding your life after romantic misadventures, something the film’s titular character knows a thing or two about. Released in February, “It Isn’t Perfect But It Might Be” wasn’t a runaway success, topping out at No. 36 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart (Mad About the Boy, however, was the largest-grossing British film of 2025). But it bridged the gap between eras, and proved the first of many smart maneuvers in an electrifying breakout campaign.

The success of Olivia Dean’s 2025 was not about chance, but careful placement of an artist with cross-generational appeal. Savvy decisions, stellar songs and a unique artist persona put Dean in prime position to succeed. Released in late September,The Art of Lovingbecame an immediate mainstay on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and a viral moment for “Man I Need” propelled it to global smash status.

Read our full Olivia Dean Rookie of the Year essay here, written by Billboard UK’s Thomas Smith.

Listen to our podcast about Olivia Dean’s rookie year here, with Billboard UK‘s Sophie Williams.

Sixteen years is an eternity in rap. That’s how long theClipsewent between 2009’sTil the Casket Dropsand the Thornton brothers’ resurrection albumLet God Sort Em Out, which landed in July. Malice left the group to pursue his faith, and Pusha T enjoyed a dominant solo run in the 2010s. But all roads led back to Virginia Beach for a fruitful 2025 reunion —one that not just re-confirmed the duo as all-time marksmen, but showed they could still be leaders in the contemporary landscape, even as 25-year veterans.

Let God Sort Em Outwas released on July 11, crystallizing the rap album of the year hype surrounding the LP. Push and Malice proved to be sharper than Valyrian steel in the booth, even at 48 and 53 years old, respectively. Of course, there was plenty of luxury coke raps with “kilos in my Maybach” and Push scoffing at driving an Audi à la Jay-Z with BMW X5s on “Show You How,” but the killer mentality was complemented by growth, evolved perspective and maturity. “If you listen to a Clipse record and you don’t feel like going to buy a coupe, we failed you,” Pharrell toldBillboard.

Read our full Clipse Comeback of the Year essay here, written by Michael Saponara.

Listen to our podcast about Clipse’s comeback year here, also with Michael Saponara.

About 15 years ago, in February 2011, a menacing group of young adults set the internet ablaze with its anarchic musical performance onLate Night with Jimmy Fallon. The rabble-rousers of Odd Future took their off-color, Tumblr-coded rap music to network television – and their appearancemarked their introduction tothe mainstream.

But at the time,and foryears after, Odd Future’s ringleader and breakout talent,Tyler, The Creator,seemedan unlikely candidate to ever transcend cult status. Odd Future’s left-field aesthetic and at-times nauseating lyrical content was a non-starter for many. Later that year, GLAAD denounced Odd Future’s homophobic and misogynistic subject matter; as late as 2015, the U.K. banned Tyler from entry due to his lyrics.All par for the course for an artist whose signature lyric up to that point was “KILL PEOPLE BURN S—TF—KSCHOOL.”

A decade later, however, Tyler is an integral part of the pop cultural fabric, both domestically and abroad. Today, his high-concept hip-hop has placed him in rarefied air with rap superstars like Kendrick Lamar and Drake, with Grammy wins, lucrative worldtoursand impressive chart success — a position he cemented with his massive 2025.

Read our full Tyler, The Creator No. 10 essay here, written by Eric Renner Brown.

Listen to our podcast about Tyler’s Greatest Pop Star year here, with Kyle Denis.

Leveraging the momentum she garnered in the final months of 2024,Doechiisolidified herself as a bonafide pop star in 2025.

After dropping herAlligator Bites Never Healmixtape in August ‘24, Doechii stole the show on several late-year collaborations, including Tyler, the Creator’sChromakpoiastandout “Balloon,” which arrived just days before the Swamp Princess earned three nods at the 2025 Grammys. Her infectious verse and Recording Academy co-sign, as well as a pair ofviralliveperformances, spurred even greater interest in her music, resulting in the breakthrough success of “Denial Is a River.”

If Doechii left fans with any disappointments from her year, it’s that her official debut studio album — whose 2025 arrival she hadguaranteed in late 2024— never materialized. All that means, however, is that Doechii could be in for an even more dominant 2026 if and when her debut LP finally arrives.

Read our full Doechii No. 9 essay here, written by Kyle Denis.

Listen to our podcast about Doechii’s Greatest Pop Star year here, with AJ Marks of r/Popheads.

In 2025, country superstarMorgan Wallenfurthered his ascent into the top tier of music’s zeitgeist, continuing to cement his status as a musical powerhouse both within his genre and far beyond, hitting new career high marks both on the charts and on the road.

In January, Wallen signaled that 2025 would be another banner year, by revealing his fourth studio album,I’m the Problem, and releasing the hit title track. He’d already primed fans for a juggernaut album with Hot 100-topping “Love Somebody” in 2024, but the title track shaped the tone for some of the moodier moments on the album, detailing a hazardous, spiteful relationship and laying the groundwork for an expansive album brimming with songs that are steeped in heartbreak and relational tension.

Read our full Morgan Wallen No. 8 essay here, written by Jessica Nicholson.

Listen to our podcast about Wallen’s Greatest Pop Star year here, with Melinda Newman.

In the mid-2020s, a lot of the defaults of pop stardom seemed to be reversed from where they were 20 years earlier. Breakout artists are more adult than teen or college-age, more diaristic than danceable, more relatable than aspirational. We praise pop stars for showing us who they really are, not simply showing us what they can really do. EnterTate McRae.

In 2024, McRae rode the momentum of “Greedy” to further hit singles (“It’s OK I’m OK,” “2 Hands”), with an increased emphasis on music videos and a growing prowess as a live performer, as her Think Later World Tour brought her all over Europe and America and even took her to New York’s Madison Square Garden for the first time. She ended that year an Honorable Mention in our Greatest Pop Stars list,with us writingthat she had “yet to quite equal that [‘Greedy’] ubiquity with her subsequent releases — though with a new album scheduled for February (and another world tour starting the next month), she certainly seems like a strong bet for 2025.”

That bet would have paid handsomely. McRae leveled up like few other pop artists in 2025, realizing her full star potential in spellbinding fashion across various singles, albums and performances — and proving pop still had a place in its center for the daughters of Britney and Xtina. By year’s end, comparing Tate to those legends didn’t even feel that far-fetched.

Read our full Tate McRae No. 7 essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger.

Listen to our podcast about McRae’s Greatest Pop Star year here, with Kristen Wisneski and Michael Saponara.

When the KPop Demon Hunters trailer dropped in May, could anyone have predicted the runaway success it would enjoy for the entire back half of 2025? Certainly its soundtrack creators didn’t, nor did perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of that album’s command of the charts: Korean American singer-songwriters EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI, who provide the singing voices for the animated film’s demon slaying good guys, HUNTR/X.

Released in June, the film slowly climbed to become Netflix’s most streamed title of all time, while the soundtrack — with songs consciously crafted to stand alone as well as they work within a narrative — made a similar trek to the top of the charts; after debuting on the Billboard 200 at No. 8 in July, it continued to go up, up, up for 12 weeks, before finally reaching No. 1 on the chart dated Sept. 20. On the Billboard Hot 100, meanwhile, it became the first soundtrack with four simultaneous top 10 hits in the history of the ranking. K-pop superstars TWICE even got a boost for their single “Strategy,” which appears on the soundtrack: originally released in 2024, it peaked at No. 51 on the chart in September after debuting in August.

Read our full KPop Demon Hunters Cast No. 6 essay here, written by Abby Webster.

Listen to our podcast about the KPDH cast’s year here, with Meghan Mahar.

As she’lll tell you herself, Sabrina Carpenter is a “Busy Woman” — and if there was any doubt remaining to her superstar-level productivity, she squashed it in 2025. After dominating the headlines and charts with songs from her 2024 LP Short n’ Sweet (she was our No. 2 Greatest Pop Star of that year) it seemed like she had done everything fans could possibly want. But in 2025, she defied all expectations, nearly matching the dominance of her breakout year across the globe.

The year started off slowly by Sabrina’s (extremely high) standards. After concluding the U.S. leg of the Short n’ Sweet Tour in November of 2024, Carpenter took some much needed “down” time. Or so we thought: In reality, she was gearing up for two massive moments: the Grammy Awards and the announcement of Short n’ Sweet (Deluxe). The former came to fruition on Feb. 2, where Carpenter dazzled the audience with a show-stopping mashup of “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” before taking home two awards for best pop solo performance and best pop vocal album; and the announcement of the latter came “as a thank you for giving [this album] 2 Grammy’s” just two days later.

Read our full Sabrina Carpenter No. 5 essay here, written by Meghan Mahar.

Listen to our podcast about Carpenter’s year here, with Lina Morgan of the Song vs. Song podcast.

How do you follow up one of the best years of any artist in hip-hop history? You just let off the first shot in the most significant rap battle since The Battle of New York City in 2001 when Jay-Z got on that Summer Jam stage, stood in front of that crowd, and said, “Ask Nas, he don’t want it with Hov.” You then meticulously picked your opponent apart with clever and maniacal diss records effectively mimicking what Drake did to Meek Mill when he answered “Charged Up” with a hit record in “Back to Back” back in 2015. The knockout punch then goes viral, hits No. 1 on the only chart that matters, and gets nominated for multiple Grammys.

And while rumors of an album swirl, as fans and the industry alike assume you’d capitalize some way from all the attention the battle has garnered, you get tapped to headline the Super Bowl Halftime show. Finally, you do drop that sixth studio album, which debuts at No. 1 and takes over the entire top five of the Billboard Hot 100, and announce a stadium tour that would touch 18 countries the following year. That’s how Kendrick Lamar answered his critics after wrestling the crown away from his peers Drake and J. Cole, effectively turning the trio once affectionately known as “The Big 3” into officially just “Big Me.”

Lamar’s 2024 — which ended with him being named our staff’s No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of that year — effectively set up 2025 to be his victory lap. He started the year off with GNX still in the Billboard 200 top five and had an absolutely absurd February. He then took home five Grammys while having an audience of his peers scream “A-minor” in unison, needing extra arms to carry the best music video, best rap song, best rap performance, song of the year and record of the year trophies —all for “Not Like Us” —back to Compton. He then turned around and delivered the most watched Super Bowl Halftime Show to date, in which he ran up the score on Drake worse than the Eagles torching the Chiefs, by performing a song at the center of a preposterous and frivolous lawsuit — getting a sold-out stadium filled with people from all walks of life rapping along at the top of their lungs, while Drake’s ex tennis superstar Serena Williams Crip Walked on his proverbial grave.

Read our full Kendrick Lamar No. 4 essay here, written by Angel Diaz.

Listen to our podcast discussion about Lamar’s year here, with Carl Lamarre.

If you needed a sign that 2025 was destined to be a big one for Lady Gaga, look no further than when she started the year by immediately scoring her sixth Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit.

Once the tinsel settled on Mariah’s annual eggnog-fueled reign atop the chart, the first non-Christmas No. 1 of 2025 was Bruno Mars and Gaga’s “Die With a Smile,” the August 2024-released duet that willed its way to the top nearly half a year later. “I’m sending love, peace and absolutely as much joy as possible for 2025,” Gaga told fans in a Jan. 7 TikTok video after the No. 1 news. “Thank you for making the beginning of mine so special.” (She also marked the achievement by noting just how long she’s been riding at the top of this pop game: “I can’t believe I’ve had two No. 1s in three different decades that I’ve been releasing my music.”)

And she was just getting started: As she revealed in a late 2024 interview, “Die With a Smile” was the “missing piece” on the track list for her yet-untitled LG7 project, and as the hit duet dominated the top of the Hot 100 for five nonconsecutive weeks to start the year (not to mention a total 18 weeks atop the Billboard Global 200), Gaga ramped up anticipation for her seventh album with a mysterious countdown clock to Jan. 27. It all led to billboards around New York City followed by the official announcement on Instagram: “MAYHEM coming March 7.”

Read our full Lady Gaga No. 3 essay here, written by Katie Atkinson.

Listen to our podcast discussion about Gaga’s year here, with Eric Frankenberg.

After a relatively quiet beginning to the year sitting alone in her tower, just honing her powers —and yes, dancing the night away at the Grammys and making her second Super Bowl appearance —Taylor Swift called upon us to pledge allegiance to her hands, her team and her vibes in 2025. Naturally, we obeyed.

Her well-deserved break since finishing the blockbuster, globe-traversing Eras Tour in December 2024 ended when she lit the sky up in May. A nearly six-year battle had concluded: The superstar finally owned her masters. “I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” she wrote in a letter to her fans on her website, with an accompanying social media post of herself surrounded by her first six albums – Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation – all now totally hers. “I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.”

And when August rolled around – a glitterbomb dropped. Swift appeared on New Heights, Kelce’s podcast with his brother Jason, to announce her 12th album The Life of a Showgirl on the sports-and-pop-culture show. “This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during [the Eras Tour],” she explained at the time. As Jason deftly questioned his brother’s girlfriend about not just about Showgirl, but also Eras, her family, her newly acquired taste for sourdough bread, and her relationship with Travis, the world watched a two-hour broadcast that quickly broke records and allowed us a glimpse into her post-Eras world. When Taylor Swift opens her mouth —even if it’s just to make silly bread puns — we all listen.

Read our full Taylor Swift No. 2 essay here, written by Denise Warner.

Listen to our podcast discussion about Swift’s year here, also with Denise Warner.

After a meteoric rise that saw him dominate both Latin and global pop with three Billboard No. 1 albums under his belt, Bad Bunny entered 2025 already regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. From topping the Billboard 200 with the summer blockbuster Un Verano Sin Ti and the moodier Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana to smashing stadium attendance records with 2022’s World’s Hottest Tour and headlining Coachella 2023, the Puerto Rican superstar had become synonymous with cultural impact. By the end of 2024, he was entrenched at the top of global music. But with a few new singles in December — minimal EDM-leaning “El Clúb” and the jíbara-driven “Pitorro de Coco” — Benito hinted at a new chapter.

While Debí Tirar Más Fotos began with less fanfare compared to Bad Bunny’s past blockbuster releases, its early reception spoke to the power of good music traveling on its own merits. Dropping at a time of year when the industry is quieter — just after New Year’s celebrations (Jan. 5) and on the Three Kings’ Day Latin American holiday — his sixth solo album initially came off as a subdued project. But that perception didn’t last for long: In an almost perfect reflection of its message, rooted in preserving and boosting Puerto Rican identity and culture, the album’s growth came organically, nurtured by word-of-mouth connection and cultural resonance. It became clear that the album was poised for dominance — and dominate it did.

Read our full Bad Bunny No. 1 essay here, written by Isabela Raygoza.

Listen to our podcast discussion about Bad Bunny’s year here, also with Isabela.