Beyoncé has been crowned the greatest pop star of the 21st century by Billboard as the first quarter of it comes to a close.
The publication debuted their staff-chosen top pick this week after counting down from 25, putting Taylor Swift at No. 2 despite noting she’s “the century’s biggest pop star by the numbers.”
“Few artists this period can match her in any of the most critical basic categories of pop stardom – commercial success, performance abilities, critical acclaim and accolades, industry influence, iconic cultural moments – and absolutely no one can equal her in all of them,” Billboard said of Bey. “Even Taylor Swift, the lone artist who really challenged Beyoncé for the top spot on these rankings – and who does have a clear statistical lead on Bey in many key categories… – simply hasn’t been around for long enough to be able to match the expansiveness of her quarter-century of dominance.”
Of her many accolades since the 21st century began, Bey has 12 No. 1 singles, 10 No. 1 albums, 32 top 10 singles and is the most-awarded artist in Grammy history with 32 trophies – and likely more to come as she’s nominated 11 times for the forthcoming 2025 Grammy Awards.
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A testament to her greatness, it was recently announced that fans at Yale University will be able to take a course about the singer titled ‘Beyoncé Makes History’ in the Spring 2025 semester.
Professor of African American Studies and Music Daphne Brooks will teach the class, which according to a report from the Yale Daily News “will examine Beyoncé’s artistic work from 2013 to 2024 as a lens to study Black history, intellectual thought and performance.”
The class is a spinoff of Brooks’ prior course at Princeton University, ‘Black Women in Popular Music Culture.’
“Those classes were always overenrolled,” she said. “And there was so much energy around the focus on Beyoncé, even though it was a class that starts in the late 19th century and moves through the present day. I always thought I should come back to focusing on her and centering her work pedagogically at some point.”
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The course explores Beyoncé’s music, fashion and visual media from her 2013 self-titled album to 2024’s Cowboy Carter, while examining the diverse experiences of Black women in media and politics. Students will discuss scholarly readings, participate in visual album screenings, work with archives at the Beinecke Library, engage in public humanities projects and create playlists linking Beyoncé’s music to her influences.
Brooks added: “[This class] seemed good to teach because [Beyoncé] is just so ripe for teaching at this moment in time. The number of breakthroughs and innovations she’s executed and the way she’s interwoven history and politics and really granular engagements with Black cultural life into her performance aesthetics and her utilization of her voice as a portal to think about history and politics — there’s just no one like her.”
