Here’s Every Year-End Billboard Top Artist

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 2023, 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 2023 Top Artists tally, making history in the process: As the superstar previously reigned in 2015 and 2009, she is the first act to finish at No. 1 in three distinct decades, dating to the award’s origin in the year-end 1981 Billboard issue.

Further demonstrating Swift’s sustained success on Billboard’s charts, the span from her first Top Artists triumph in 2009 to her latest in 2023 marks the longest in the retrospective’s history.

Meanwhile, Swift and Adele are the only acts to achieve No. 1 successes on Top Artists three times each, as Adele won in 2011, 2012 and 2016.

Eight other artists have each earned the honor of leading Top Artists twice: 50 Cent (2003, 2005), Chris Brown (2006, 2008), Destiny’s Child (2000, 2001), Drake (2018, 2021), Garth Brooks (1992, 1993), New Kids on the Block (1989, 1990), Post Malone (2019, 2020) and Usher (1998, 2004).

Swift’s latest No. 1 finish on Top Artists follows 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 2023, 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.