Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century Podcast: Lady Gaga (No. 5)

On today’s (Nov. 6) episode of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century podcast, we kick off the top five of our list with a pop star who lit up the entire music world of the late ’00s and early ’10s — with a string of chart smashes accompanied by blindingly brilliant music videos, live performances and fashion statements — and, after a murkier middle to the decade, reconfirmed her status as one of pop’s best and brightest with a turn-of-the-’20s comeback to cross-platform stardom. (Read our No. 5 Greatest Pop Star essay about Lady Gaga here.)

Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard Pride editor Stephen Daw and BB executive digital director Katie Atkinson to remember all the ups and downs of Lady Gaga’s 16-year pop journey. First, we compare her case to that of Britney Spears, our No. 6 Greatest Pop Star, and discuss if being the No. 1 pop star from a period as stacked as turn of the 2010s should be weighed differently than other pop star reigns. Then, we wax nostalgic about that Gaga era — how she was able to detonate upon impact with her 2009 arrival to top 40 stardom, and how her ’09 just kept getting bigger and weirder and more all-consuming until it ended up perhaps the greatest rookie season in pop music history. We also recall how Gaga’s early-career peak raised the bar for all of her pop peers moving forward, in everything from her TV interviews to her headlining tours to her award-show performances to her red-carpet outfits — and particularly her music videos, which helped resuscitate the format at its post-TRL cultural low point.

We then share memories about the Born This Way era, and how Gaga’s artistic brilliance and global ubiquity started to get a little overbearing, as she struggled to maintain her momentum through a rocky couple album eras in the mid-’00s — before bouncing back with A Star Is Born and its soundtrack before decade’s end, and taking a well-earned victory lap to begin the 2020s. We end by swapping favorites of Gaga’s finest social media moments (did she invent Pop Twitter?), arguing whether there was an alternate-universe path to redemption for “Do What U Want” and offering takes on which of her more contentious movie and TV roles are worth revisiting.

Hear it all below, get acquainted with our past episodes here, and be sure to subscribe to Billboard‘s Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century series wherever you get your podcasts! (New episodes will be revealed every Wednesday, following the Tuesday publishing of our Greatest Pop Star for that week, up to the unveiling of our No. 1 on Dec. 3.)