Get the latest gossip

Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars: The 10 Greatest Pop Stars Never to Be Greatest for a Full Year


This Greatest Pop Stars Sidebar looks at the greatest pop stars who were never quite great enough to be our No. 1 for a full year.

Resumé: The biggest boy band — or pop group of any kind — at the turn of the ‘90s, using the formula manager Maurice Starr established with New Edition to even greater success, thanks to gigantic hooks, fun and imitable dance moves, and a crossover-friendlier (read: whiter) image. Resumé: In the early ‘00s, no act married critical acclaim with commercial success like Big Boi and Andre 3000, ruling the Grammys and the charts — and releasing perhaps the most universally beloved pop song of the century so far with 2003’s “Hey Ya!” GnR burned bright but incredibly short, bursting out of the underground with historic velocity in the late ‘80s, but already showing signs of fatigue by the time their scale matched their popularity in the early ‘90s.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Billboard