Here’s Every Year-End Billboard Top Artist
Taylor Swift is the latest act to wrap at No. 1.
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It’s the biggest honor that an act can claim on Billboard’s charts each year: the coveted No. 1 spot on the annual Top Artists recap.
As of 2024, the category ranks the year’s best-performing acts based on activity on the Billboard 200 albums chart and the Billboard Hot 100 songs survey, as well as Billboard Boxscore, which recaps touring data.
Taylor Swift rules the 2024 Top Artists tally, making history in the process: As the superstar was also the year-end top artist in 2009, 2015 and 2023, she is the only act to earn the honor four times, since the category launched in 1981. Previously, Swift and Adele (2011, 2012 and 2016) were tied with three year-end titles. Meanwhile, in 2023 Swift became the first act to finish at No. 1 in three distinct decades.
Further demonstrating Swift’s sustained success on Billboard’s charts, the span from her first Top Artists triumph in 2009 to her latest in 2024 marks the longest in the retrospective’s history.
Beyond Swift’s four year-end victories and Adele’s three, eight artists have each claimed the distinction of leading Top Artists twice: Drake (2018, 2021), Post Malone (2019, 2020; he stood as the last artist until Swift to rank at No. 1 in consecutive years), Chris Brown (2006, 2008), 50 Cent (2003, 2005), Usher (1998, 2004), Destiny’s Child (2000, 2001), Garth Brooks (1992, 1993) and New Kids on the Block (1989, 1990).
Swift’s two most recent No. 1 finishes on Top Artists follow Bad Bunny’s rule in 2022, when he became the first leading act that primarily records Spanish-language music.
From the first list in 1981 to 2024, browse every act that has dominated the annual Top Artists chart, as revealed in every year-end Billboard issue, encompassing superstars in pop, country, R&B/hip-hop, rock and more.
