Beyoncé

The Houstonian rose to fame in the late ’90s as the central member of pop-R&B group Destiny’s Child.

The following decade, she started her ongoing streak of number one solo studio albums with Dangerously in Love (2003), the source of her first number one pop single, the ecstatic “Crazy in Love.” Nearly omnipresent hits such as the elegantly dismissive “Irreplaceable” (2006) and boisterous “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” (2008), combined with sold-out world tours and Grammy Awards, all heightened Beyoncé’s profile in the 2000s.

Billboard named her female artist of the decade, while the RIAA acknowledged that, with 64 gold and platinum certifications, she was its top-selling artist. Beyoncé continued to diversify in the 2010s with the visual albums Beyoncé (2013) and Lemonade (2016), followed by the Jay-Z collaboration Everything Is Love (2018) and her work on the remake of The Lion King (2019). The latter project was expanded with the soundtrack The Lion King: The Gift, executive-produced by Beyoncé, who also wrote and directed the related musical film Black Is King (2020).

Beyoncé has since become the most awarded artist in Grammy history with Renaissance (2022), a cosmopolitan dancefloor celebration tying together gospel, disco, house, bounce, and Afrobeats with nods to ballroom culture. The second act in that series, Cowboy Carter (2024), carried Beyoncé into the country music realm and topped the pop, country, and folk charts.