Best Pop Singers of 21st Century (No. 10)

With the primary quarter of the twenty first century coming to an in depth, Billboard is spending the subsequent few months counting down our employees picks for the 25 best pop stars of the final 25 years. You possibly can see the celebrities who’ve made our checklist to date on the backside of this submit — however first, we keep in mind the century in Adele, a powerhouse presence and unlikely famous person who emerged from a pop golden age to place up numbers most of her friends may solely dream about.

Nobody may have presumably seen Adele coming. 

By the yr 2010, Adele was already a Grammy-winning world hitmaker, so that you couldn’t actually say she got here out of nowhere. However throughout a interval of pop music that was quintessentially BIG – in sound, in scope, in ambition and in industrial returns – for the most important artist by a near-exponential magnitude to transform the British singer-songwriter with all of the weepy breakup ballads was borderline-unthinkable, even because it was changing into an more and more apparent actuality. And for her to get even larger from there, till she was placing up stats no different pop phenomenon had achieved earlier than or has matched since – even because the music trade round her was supposedly in failing well being – stays dizzying to consider a decade later.

How did she do it? With a singularly mighty voice, an industrial-strength creative identification, an unexpectedly earthy humorousness, and naturally, a handful of no-doubt five-star pop songs. And considerably counter-intuitively, additionally with good timing: Most of early-2010s pop music consisted of futuristic dance-pop jams pushing a pro-partying agenda with a pre-apocalyptic undercurrent, making Adele’s retro-leaning soul-pop a much-needed breath of contemporary air. Maybe extra importantly, although, her albums had been additionally merely a breath – stripped-down, emotionally uncooked units that invited you to hit pause on the urgency of the current and the nervousness of the longer term and spend 40-plus minutes within the light thrall of an artist tapping into one thing really timeless. 

However earlier than she was a record-setting world-beater, Adele was merely one breakout artist from the newest British Invasion – and never the second’s greatest or flashiest. A number of soulful U.Ok. singer-songwriters had been making waves on U.S. shores within the late ‘00s, a mini-movement largely kicked off by Amy Winehouse’s sudden 2007 world breakthrough along with her Again to Black album. Winehouse’s large success, larger-than-life persona and perpetual tabloid presence towered over her friends of the time, and Adele’s 2008 debut album 19 was dogged with comparisons to Again to Black and press insistence on dubbing her “The New Amy.” 

Even nonetheless, 19 managed to make a serious impression on either side of the Atlantic. Within the U.S., the album drew robust critiques for Adele’s robust songwriting and strikingly wealthy voice; Billboard wrote that she “really has potential to turn into among the many most revered and provoking worldwide artists of her technology.” The album began sluggish commercially within the States, however was boosted by Adele’s head-turning October efficiency on a much-watched Saturday Night time Dwell episode, which hoisted the album to the Billboard 200’s prime 10 and helped its heartbroken “Chasing Pavements” turn into her first stateside crossover hit, reaching No. 21 on the Billboard Scorching 100. The Recording Academy additionally took discover, awarding her a pair of Grammys on the 2009 awards: finest new artist and finest pop vocal efficiency (for London ode “Hometown Glory”). 

Nonetheless, nothing may have ready followers for the breakthrough that was to come back. “Rolling within the Deep” arrived in November 2010, and instantly signaled a elevating of the stakes: Whereas “Chasing Pavements” had been despairing in its heartache, “Deep” combined that anguish with rigidity, fury and outright vengefulness, supported by a taut, stomping folk-soul groove (helmed by producer and co-writer Paul Epworth) that made the track incendiary from Adele’s first “There’s a fireplace…” insistence. Peaking with a frayed, chorus-introducing vocal hook (“We may have had it AAA-ALLLLLL…..”) that hit as arduous as any EDM beat drop of the time, “Rolling” shortly proved Adele’s most plain single but, reaching the Scorching 100 earlier than 2010’s finish and topping the chart the subsequent Could. “Deep” made for a stark distinction with the No. 1s on both aspect of its run, by turbo-pop artists Katy Perry, Pitbull and LMFAO, nevertheless it additionally had sufficient of a pulse and a vitality to it that it didn’t really feel completely misplaced amongst these hits, both. 

The late-cycle momentum of 19, the rising recognition of “Deep,” and robust pre-release buzz over its heart-rending lyrics and expanded musical palette all helped Adele’s second album, the gorgeous 21, bow atop the Billboard 200 with a really robust 352,000 in first-week gross sales. However extra spectacular than its debut was its endurance: The album would get pleasure from eight separate reigns at No. 1 over the course of 2011, totaling 13 weeks in all, and remained within the prime 5 for its first 39 weeks on the chart. Over the course of that 2011 run, the album additionally produced a second smash within the tear-jerking energy ballad “Somebody Like You,” which adopted “Deep” to No. 1 on the Scorching 100 – the primary No. 1 within the chart’s historical past to characteristic no instrumentation past voice and piano – after a spellbinding efficiency at that yr’s MTV Video Music Awards. By yr’s finish, the album had offered 5.8 million copies, sufficient to assist enhance your entire trade’s year-over-year gross sales numbers into the positives for the primary time since 2004. 

Whereas enormously spectacular, the numbers solely seize a part of the cultural influence of 21 in 2011. The album and its singles grew to become such apparent shorthand for heartbreak music that it was featured in an SNL sketch the place numerous solid members (and friends Emma Stone and Coldplay) play co-workers having fun with a cathartic cry collectively over numerous life sadnesses to “Somebody Like You.” In the meantime, numerous different artists – modern hitmakers and legends alike, from all around the musical spectrum – had been impressed to strive their fingers at Adele’s new entries to the all-time pop canon; in that yr alone, “Deep” was lined or remixed by John Legend, Patti Smith, Linkin Park, the Glee Forged, Mike Posner, Jamie xx, a teenage Ariana Grande, Lil Wayne and dozens extra. That cross-demographic, cross-generational attraction was an enormous key to Adele’s success; whereas Girl Gaga and Drake would possibly’ve enraptured as many teenagers on the time, Adele was the basic pop star you might hearken to together with your dad and mom, and even your grandparents.  

By 2012, 21 was nonetheless exhibiting no indicators of slowing down. The set spun off a 3rd Scorching 100 No. 1 single within the betrayal anthem “Set Hearth to the Rain,” which topped the chart in February – only a week earlier than Adele would carry out at that yr’s Grammys, her first dwell look since emergency throat surgical procedure compelled her to chop her Adele Dwell Tour brief the prior October. Unsurprisingly, she additionally cleaned up on the awards, profitable in all six of the classes during which she was nominated, together with album of the yr for 21 and track and report of the yr for “Deep.” In the meantime, 21 had resumed its domination of the Billboard 200, topping the chart for an additional 10 weeks from January to March, with an additional eleventh week in June bringing its two-year complete to 24 weeks at No. 1 – tying Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain for the longest keep atop the 200 since Michael Jackson’s Thriller spent a historic 37 weeks there within the early ‘80s. In November 2012, the set was additionally licensed Diamond by the RIAA, the primary new album to formally break eight digits in models shipped since Usher’s 2004 blockbuster Confessions. 

Adele’s victory-lapping 2012 prolonged to at least one extra musical launch – the Bond theme “Skyfall,” which debuted within the Scorching 100’s prime 10 and would win Adele a finest authentic track Oscar the next yr – and one other comparatively minor hit off 21 within the No. 16-peaking “Hearsay Has It.” After which, Adele headed again to the sidelines: Whereas different pop stars of the period would hold at the least one foot within the highlight in between album cycles – with one-off singles, characteristic appearances, late-night and competition performances and/or constant social media presence – Adele established the precedent in her post-21 period of a more-or-less full mainstream retreat when she was not in album mode. For many of 2013 and 2014, Adele was not often seen or heard from, as she finally set to work on the album that might turn into 21’s follow-up. 

By the point Adele returned in late 2015, anticipation for her new music had crescendoed to an arguably unmatched pitch amongst twenty first century releases. Her approval score was near-unanimous amongst pop followers of all stripes, and whereas different U.Ok. singer-songwriters with huge voices and large choruses (Sam Smith, Emeli Sandé, Labrinth) had emerged in her absence, none fairly matched her uncooked energy or all-consuming attraction, artistically or commercially. Fortunately, the track that she returned with met all expectations: “Howdy,” the craving megaballad that was to function lead single for her then-upcoming third album, was not the creative leap ahead that “Deep” was, nevertheless it scratched the itch Adele had left her followers with: It was large, it was cathartic, it was deeply satisfying and it was immediately unforgettable. Helped by a dramatic black-and-white music video (and a newly glammed-out search for its singer), “Howdy” debuted atop the Scorching 100 and stayed there for 10 weeks. 

Midway by means of that run, the whole thing of 25 was launched. Coming off the absurd gross sales efficiency of 21 and the stellar reception to “Howdy,” industrial expectations for the set had been exceptionally excessive – and although by late 2015, streaming had largely been accepted because the now-dominant type of world musical consumption, 25 was held from DSPs in its first weeks to make sure most efficiency. That most efficiency was reached, after which exceeded, after which exceeded some extra: By the top of its first week, 25 had offered 3.38 million copies. 

That 3.38 million quantity was so inconceivably gargantuan that it virtually defied being put in context; you needed to go to sports-world data like Barry Bonds’ 73 homers in a single season or Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 factors in a single recreation to specific simply how brain-scramblingly far forward of the pack it was. Not solely did it beat the earlier single-week record-holder – *NSYNC’s 2000 blockbuster No Strings Connected, which offered an unrivaled-for-15-years 2.4 million in its debut body – it handed it inside the primary three days of its launch, after which primarily added on an additional million for its troubles earlier than week’s finish. The report has gone unmatched within the 9 years since 25’s debut; even Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Division, coming off maybe the most important yr any pop star has had this century, with the advantage of 31 tracks’ value of streaming consumption and untold numbers of vinyl variants for buy, topped out at 2.6 million – an impossibly excessive quantity for actually another artist in all of pop historical past, however nonetheless not even a full week’s work for mid-2010s Adele.

The debut was past historic, and 25 spent the subsequent six weeks at No. 1 – transferring one other seven-digits’ value in two of these frames – earlier than including one other three weeks atop the chart to its tally in February and March 2016. However whereas 21 primarily dominated the world for a full two calendar years, the cultural reign of 25 was shorter; wistful second single “When We Had been Younger” stalled at No. 14 on the Scorching 100, and whereas the extra upbeat third single “Ship My Love (To Your New Lover)” reached No. 8, it will be the one track from the set to comply with “Howdy” to the highest 10. The album was nonetheless licensed Diamond that September – after simply 9 months of launch – and Adele once more swept album, report and track of the yr on the 2017 Grammys, the place she additionally carried out a heartfelt tribute to the late George Michael. However for the primary time in her profession, Adele was ending an album period with much less momentum than she began. 

Following the 2017 Grammys, Adele as soon as once more disappeared from the general public eye, staying out of sight for a lot of the decade’s the rest. In 2021, she started to tease a return with new album 30, saying a November launch date for lead single “Straightforward on Me.” The track – one other basic Adele piano ballad – debuted atop the Scorching 100 and finally matched the 10-week No. 1 run of “Howdy.” 30 arrived a month later and spent its first six weeks of launch at No. 1, attracting a number of the strongest preliminary critiques of her profession. However this time neither the album’s debut nor its endurance would match its predecessor; the album entered with 839,000 first-week models, nonetheless simply the most effective variety of any album that calendar yr, however not even 1 / 4 of 25’s stratospheric bow. When 30 additionally struggled to supply a permanent hit past its lead single, it appeared to verify that Adele’s interval as a one-of-one industrial power had doubtless handed. 

However, Adele stays considered one of pop music’s prime attracts, each on report and in live performance – along with her Weekends With Adele residency on the Colosseum in Las Vegas attracting rave critiques and spending a full two years (from 2022-24) as one of many hottest tickets in dwell leisure. Whereas Adele’s presence in her hit songs and albums is most related to melodrama, introspection and normal seriousness, she’s managed to amass and retain a large amount of excellent will as a public determine by being a down-to-earth, cheeky and infrequently downright hilarious presence in her dwell appearances – in 2020, she even stunned followers by signing on as a non-performing SNL host, in a well-received flip. The famously album-inspiring romantic turmoil of her private life has additionally taken a flip for the less-dramatic in recent times, as she’s been linked with sports activities super-agent Wealthy Paul since 2021, revealing their engagement in August.

Whereas Adele will doubtless by no means once more be as culturally central a determine as she was when she rose from the shadows within the early 2010s to solid her personal shadow over the remainder of fashionable music, it’s equally unlikely that she’s going to ever completely fade from the mainstream – she’s too good, too likable and too inconceivable to switch. And she or he stays a priceless reminder that whereas some pop greats look like they’re destined to rule the world from the opening seconds of their first single or video, it may be much more rewarding when an artist who appears to come back from humble roots shortly flowers into an icon, hanging a chord totally of their very own because of serendipitous timing, impeccable artistry and unquestionably all-time pop songs. 

Learn extra concerning the Best Pop Stars of the twenty first Century right here — and remember to examine again subsequent Thursday as we reveal our No. 9 artist!

THE LIST SO FAR:

Honorable Mentions

25. Katy Perry
24. Ed Sheeran
23. Unhealthy Bunny
22. One Course
21. Lil Wayne
20. Bruno Mars
19. BTS
18. The Weeknd
17. Shakira
16. Jay-Z
15. Miley Cyrus
14. Justin Timberlake
13. Nicki Minaj
12. Eminem
11. Usher