(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Beyoncé was our Greatest Pop Star of 2014 — with our ’10 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)
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Pity the music publications who went early on their 2013 year-end albums lists. On Dec. 13 of that year — late on a Thursday night — Beyoncé dropped her self-titled, 14-track opus on an unsuspecting Internet, who previously had only faint inklings of a new album even being near completion. The set was brilliant, a stunningly coherent and aggressively modern mélange of styles and collaborators, about which you could poll 10 separate BeyHive members on their favorite song and likely get 10 different answers — and each track came with its own music video, too. Suddenly, the year’s much-anticipated Daft Punk and Justin Timberlake albums didn’t seem quite so vital.
What’s easy to forget now is that as head-smackingly obvious as Beyoncé made Queen Bey’s regality upon its release, her reign was not so unquestioned in the earlier part of the ‘10s. Her 2011 set 4 was well-reviewed, and spawned fan favorites in “Countdown” and “Love on Top,” but had little luck spinning off major hits; while four top 10 Hot 100 hits were pulled from prior set I Am… Sasha Fierce, nothing off 4 even made the top 15. The album ultimately posted Bey’s poorest sales to date, and while a masterful, hit-laden Super Bowl halftime set reinforced her status as one of the 21st century’s canonical pop stars, it also suggested that maybe she was moving into the next phase of her career — one primarily as a live attraction and legacy artist.
Beyoncé took until the next morning to make those suggestions seem ridiculous, and its creator spent essentially the entirety of 2014 rubbing our faces in just how wrong we’d been. “Drunk in Love,” the set’s delirious ode to spontaneous spousal arousal — featuring hubby Jay-Z, natch — quickly became the radio hit that 4 failed to produce: After a Grammy-opening performance from the power couple in February, the lead single rocketed to a No. 2 peak on the Hot 100, the biggest hit of the new decade for either artist. And is often the case with Beyoncé hits, the song’s greatest impact was on the general vernacular, making “Surfbort” one of the year’s biggest cultural buzzwords (and fashion statements).
The victory lap continued for most of the year, including chart runs for “Partition” (moving the marital sex from the kitchen floor to the limo backseat) and “Flawless,” which later received a Twitter-freezing remix featuring Nicki Minaj. The latter song also served as the linchpin number in Beyoncé’s 16-minute medley performance of nearly the entirety of her self-titled set at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards, an unprecedented amount of stage time and creative freedom afforded to a single artist at the award show. The performance became iconic immediately, particularly for its striking image of Bey performing the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie-sampling anthem in front of a text background that proclaimed “FEMINIST.” The moment set the stage for pop stars becoming ever bolder and more political in their art for the decade’s remainder, with the previously largely statement-reticent Ms. Carter leading the way.
Beyoncé spent the rest of the summer on her massively successful On the Run Tour, co-headlining with Mr. Carter, and closed the year by releasing the Platinum Edition of Beyoncé in November, scoring an extra hit with the frisky bonus cut “7/11” for her troubles. But the artist’s true weight was felt outside of her own catalogue in 2014, where in the larger music industry, the established rules were being entirely reimagined: After a 2013 where pre-album release hype seemed truly interminable, suddenly everyone from U2 to Skrillex to D’Angelo was releasing new albums with little to no warning. The results of those surprise drops varied, but the excitement of new albums potentially coming from seemingly anyone at any time helped raise interest in the LP format in general to its highest point in years.
Beyoncé might have caught a lot of the industry with its pants down at the end of 2013, but by the end of 2014, everyone was permanently on alert to expect the unexpected from pop’s biggest stars — and no one was underestimating the Queen’s place within those ranks again. In fact, a number of publications that missed out on her self-titled album on their 2013 lists ended up ranking it in 2014 instead; after the year she had, it was hard to blame them for fudging their calendars a little.
Honorable Mention: Ariana Grande (My Everything, “Problem,” “Break Free”), Katy Perry (“Dark Horse,” “Birthday,” Prismatic World Tour), Nicki Minaj (The Pinkprint, “Anaconda,” “Bang Bang”)
Rookie of the Year: Iggy Azalea
Beyoncé may have ruled over the culture in 2014, but the airwaves belonged to one Amethyst Amelia Kelly, better known as Iggy Azalea. The Aussie rapper had spent the early decade percolating in the underground, but despite a big co-sign from label head T.I., had yet to score a major hit — until “Fancy,” a DJ Mustard-aping banger with a gigantic Charli XCX chorus and a Clueless-recreating video, topped the Hot 100 in June, becoming the Song of the Summer. The hot streak continued for Iggy, through her guest appearance on Ariana Grande’s No. 2 hit “Problem” and her own Rita Ora-featuring, No. 3-peaking follow-up “Black Widow.” But the backlash to the Caucasian rapper’s heavy footprint was beginning — rap legend Q-Tip decided that she needed a history lesson in December, and by next March she was an SNL punchline.
Comeback of the Year: John Legend
Despite a decade-long career in the mainstream as one of R&B’s most respected and consistently successful singer-songwriters, John Legend had never seen a crossover single even approach the top of the Hot 100. That hardly changed immediately upon the release of beat-less ballad “All of Me” in June of 2013, but the love song gradually took hold of top 40, and by May 2014, it had hit No. 1. The song’s surprise success didn’t belatedly turn John Legend into Usher overnight, but “All of Me” became the best-selling song of 2014 — and if it hadn’t been for Ed Sheeran, it would have sailed unchallenged to 2020 as the decade’s defining wedding song.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2015 here, or head back to the full list here.)
