The Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century Beats Taylor Swift

Over the past few months, Billboard magazine's voting of the 25 Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century has attracted great attention.

According to Justjared, a controversy broke out on social media last week, when Billboard announced Taylor Swift as the runner-up. That basically confirmed that Beyonce would be named the number one choice.

On December 3, Billboard officially confirmed that Beyonce was the magazine's pick for the greatest pop star of the 21st century.

Explaining why Beyonce beat Taylor, Billboard writer Andrew Unterberger wrote: While Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star of the century in numbers from album sales, streaming to touring dominance our editing team decided to select Beyonce based on her influence, growth and impact over the past 25 years.

Billboard believes that few artists at this stage can compare with Beyonce in any of the basic categories of a pop star - commercial success, performance ability, critical acclaim and praise, industry influence, iconic cultural moments.

Even Taylor Swift, the only artist to truly challenge Beyonce, and a clear leader statistically in many major categories, Billboard wrote. Even Taylor Swift has simply not been active enough to match Beyonces big career for a quarter of a century.

Beyonce's achievements listed by the magazine include: 12 songs top 1 on Billboard Hot 100, 32 songs top 10 Hot 100, 10 albums top 1 on Billboard 200, artist with the most Grammy awards in history with 32 awards, 30 MTV Video Music Awards and 27 Billboard Music Awards.

Previously, Beyonce was chosen by Billboard as the best pop star of 2003 and 2014.