Dear Gossips,
Billboard has spent the back half of this year counting down the greatest pop stars of the 21st century. This week was the official confirmation, or coronation, if you will, even though the reveal came last week when the artist in the #2 spot was announced. Naturally, everybody has been super normal about this. Everyone is getting along on social media and nobody is fighting.
It’s Beyoncé, obviously.
We’re talking about the last 25 years and, as Billboard notes at the start of the piece about Beyoncé’s quarter century of excellence, she topped the charts at the beginning of the century and topped the charts again this year, in the same month (March) at the bookend of the period in question. Think of the changes that have happened in industry – in pop culture overall, period – over the last 25 years; the way technology has influenced our direct relationship to music; how musical influence shows up and makes its impact on how we speak, dance, and interact. To be this dominant for this long of a stretch, while still being about to move the culture, as unpredictable as the culture has been…
Of course it’s Beyoncé, who has not only navigated the turbulence, but has sometimes even been the course of it herself. Self-titled back in 2013 is an obvious example but, as Billboard lays out in their summary of Beyoncé’s vision over the last quarter century, over and over again she has reset the matrix. Which is why it’s simply wrong to call her work a series of achievements – achievements are the realisation of a standards determined by someone else. Beyoncé has long ceased subscribing to a definition of success that she herself didn’t invent. She has created her own artistic world order, and this personal manifesto of excellence has fundamentally reshaped the artform in and of itself.
Again, all of this is presented in Billboard’s article – which I’m not convinced people will have read before they go and make their TikToks debating whether or not this ranking is right. So for f-ck’s sake, just read it, even if you agree. Because we have short memories, and also, more and more, the pop culture knowledge foundation is weakening, because nobody wants to do their gossip homework, because there’s so much happening all the time all at once. Because twenty-five years is a long time, and there’s so much here that Beyoncé has done that’s gotten lost in the fog or that people didn’t know about in the first place. But the facts are here, her legacy is breathtaking, she is peerless, a singular force, a whole solar system of artistry unto herself.
And it’s impossible to imagine whatever she’s preparing for this Christmas show at that football game in three weeks, I do know this: we aren’t ready.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
