Which Pop Stars Will Dominate 2025?

Welcome to a brand new year of pop star greatness! Our Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century and Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 lists are now over and done with, but the race for 2025 has just begun.

On this week’s episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we begin the year by predicting some of the pop stars who are most likely to end up defining and dominating the next 12 months. Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by fellow Billboard staffers (and Greatest Pop Stars regulars) Jason Lipshutz, Meghan Mahar and Kyle Denis to hold a fantasy draft for the year in pop stardom, putting together our dream teams of the artists we expect to be in contention for our top 10 list in December.

We each draft our four top pop star picks, and debate some of the most pressing questions going into the year in pop stardom: Will Kendrick Lamar pick up where he left off from his 2024 No. 1 Greatest Pop Star season? Can Taylor Swift maintain her historic run of top five Greatest Pop Star finishes this decade? How likely is it that BTS gets back together in time to get back in the discussion? Then, we also make a few bonus picks, rounding up our choices for artists who are likely going to enter the Greatest Pop Star discussion for the first time, and for those who are going to return to the discussion after being gone for the past few years. And we end by making a slightly more outside-the-box pick for a non-artist pop star — a celebrity who doesn’t make music, but might end up having a pop-star-type year of cultural ubiquity.

Listen to all of that here, and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions about all things related to pop stardom! We’ll have new episodes throughout the year, some checking in on the 2025 pop star race and recapping some big current events in pop stardom — new releases, award shows, big tour kickoffs — and some looking back at great moments and great runs in pop star history.