Billboard Names Lady Gaga as the 5th Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century

As part of Billboard's Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century series, the music publication declared Lady Gaga is the fifth best pop star of the past 25 years. 

In the article, writer Jason Lipshutz deemed Gaga a "game-changing phenomenon" who's "spent her career holding up fragile ideas of modern pop stardom and vigorously shaking them like a snow globe."

Click here to read Billboard's career-spanning article on Gaga, and click here to listen to its podcast further breaking down her career thus far. 

To date, Gaga has 18 songs that cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with five of those songs reaching No. 1: "Just Dance," "Poker Face," "Born This Way," Shallow" and "Rain on Me."

Four of her songs made the chart's top three: "Bad Romance" and currently "Die With a Smile" peaking at No. 2, and "Telephone" and "The Edge of Glory" at No. 3. 

"LoveGame," "Alejandro," "Applause," "Million Reasons" and "Stupid Love" peaked in the top five. 

Six of her albums hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200: "Born This Way," "ARTPOP," "Cheek to Cheek," "Joanne," "A Star is Born" and "Chromatica." She is the fastest female artist to have six chart-topping albums, with nine years and two months between the peaks of "Born This Way" and "Chromatica."

"The Fame" and "The Fame Monster" peaked in the Hot 200's top five, at No. 2 and No. 5, respectively.

All of her studio albums hit No. 1 on their respective Billboard genre charts, the Top Dance/Electronic Albums and Top Jazz Albums charts. 

In 2023, "The Fame" made history when it spent its 500th week on the Dance/Electronic Album chart. The album continues its hold as the longest-running No. 1 album on the chart.

In her 16-year career, Gaga has taken home 10 Billboard Music Awards, 18 MTV Music Video Awards and 13 Grammys, as well as an Academy Award for "Shallow." 

In 2009, Billboard named Gaga the Greatest Pop Star of the year, and in 2015, the publication deemed her Woman of the Year.