For the last four years, we’ve counted down our picks for the 10 greatest pop stars of the year, with full essays for everyone from No. 10 (Jelly Roll in 2024) to No. 1 (Kendrick Lamar in 2024), as well as bonus write-ups for our picks for Rookie and Comeback of the year, and even 10 close-but-not-quite honorable mentions. This January, we’re doing the same for our Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 — a legacy-expanding year for many of our longtime favorites, and a breakout season for a number of future icons.
We counted down the first half of our top 10 over the course of last week, with our top five being revealed all this week (Jan. 26-30). You can catch up on the entire list here, which now includes essays and podcasts for each of our top 10 picks — as well as for our rookie and comeback artists of the year winners, and shorter recaps for our 10 runner-up honorable mentions. (And if you missed any of our Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century rankings that we rolled out in 2024, be sure to catch up on those as well — and listen to additional deep dives into each of the artists selected, and our process and reasoning behind their rankings, on our Greatest Pop Stars podcast here.)
First, though: a reminder that unlike with our Year-End Charts, these Greatest Pop Stars are not mathematically determined by stats like chart position, streams or sales numbers. Those all play a big part in our final rankings, of course — but so do things like music videos, live performances and social media presence, and more intangible factors like cultural importance, industry influence and overall omnipresence. (And we measure this over the entire 2025 calendar, so if you were only heard from at the beginning or end of the year — or only had one big song or moment — that will hurt your performance here as well.)
Check out our honorable mentions, rookie and comeback of the year, and full top 10 below — and keep it tuned to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast all year as we keep tabs on the already-competitive race for the No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of 2026!
