Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 2012: Rihanna
(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Rihanna was our Greatest Pop Star of 2012 — with our ’12 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)
At the turn of the decade, Rihanna was releasing music at a dizzying pace — one album per year from the November 2009 release of the dark, brooding Rated R, through the November 2012 drop of the EDM-and-reggae-flavored hit machine Unapologetic. That strategy paid off most handsomely in 2012, when she released two new Hot 100 top 10 hits, had a 2011 smash return to No. 1, collaborated with heavy hitters like Drake and Jay-Z, and took a bunch of music writers on a trip around the world.
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Rihanna opened 2012 with her chart-topping collaboration with Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, the dizzying 2011 smash “We Found Love” — in which Rihanna became one of the first (and most successful) pop stars to adapt to EDM’s mainstream takeover — still lingering around the top of the Hot 100. She reasserted herself at No. 1 in late January, and “We Found Love” remained at the chart’s summit for two weeks. The title track from Rihanna’s 2011 album Talk That Talk, a spiky collaboration with her mentor Jay-Z, was released as a single later shortly after, eventually peaking at No. 31 on the Hot 100.
In February, Drake released the title track from his monster 2011 album Take Care as a single; the moody, low-lit track sampled the British beatmaster Jamie xx’s rework of Gil Scott-Heron’s “I’ll Take Care of You,” but the real star was Rihanna. The rumors about Drake and Rihanna’s off-mic relationship helped vault the song to No. 7 on the Hot 100; it also peaked at No. 2 on Hot Rap Songs in April, held off from the top spot by another Drake collaboration, his Lil Wayne team-up “The Motto.”
Not that Rihanna needed that achievement. By the time April rolled around, she’d won a Grammy for singing the hook on Kanye West’s all-star 2010 single “All of the Lights,” appeared on Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto mini-epic “Princess of China,” and released a pair of remixes with her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown — reworks of the raunchy Talk track “Birthday Cake” and Brown’s own “Turn Up the Music” — to controversy from onlookers.
“Where Have You Been,” another house-influenced Harris collaboration, was the last single from Talk That Talk to hit the top 10, but Rihanna’s momentum continued through her rework of the set’s “Cockiness (Love It)” featuring New York MC A$AP Rocky. The new version opened up the 2012 running of MTV’s Video Music Awards — grabbing headlines for some of the collaborators’ own onstage grabbing — where the hyperkinetic video for “We Found Love” picked up a video of the year Moonman.
Three weeks after the VMAs, Rihanna was back — and this time, she had a brand-new song. The storming, Sia-penned “Diamonds” showed off the huskier side of Rihanna’s voice, and it opened the #R7 era, with the album that eventually became known as Unapologetic. “Diamonds” reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 on December 1, giving Rihanna an even dozen chart-toppers; Unapologetic debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 a week later. In the run-up to her seventh album’s November 19 release, Rihanna headlined the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, played Saturday Night Live, and — perhaps most memorably — took a planeload of journalists on an around-the-world promotional jaunt, a disastrous and seemingly endless junket, whose negative press somehow only further demonstrated her singular allure.
Honorable Mention: Maroon 5 (Overexposed, “Payphone,” “One More Night,”), Taylor Swift (Red, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble”), Adele (“Set Fire to the Rain,” “Skyfall,” sweeping the Grammys)
Rookie of the Year: One Direction
One Direction may have come in third on the 2010 season of The X Factor, but the boy band quintet were first in fans’ hearts in America when they made their U.S. debut two years later. Their peppy debut single “What Makes You Beautiful” debuted at No. 28 on the Hot 100 in February, giving them the highest debut by a British act in over a decade. Up All Night, their first full-length, got a proper US release in March, and they quickly graduated from opening for Big Time Rush to headlining their own Stateside trek. Liam, Louis, Harry, Niall, and Zayn also cleaned up at the 2012 VMAs, winning three awards, including best new artist.
Comeback of the Year: Madonna
Leave it to Madonna to announce her return to pop at the year’s biggest televised event — the Super Bowl. In February, Madonna, with the help of Cirque du Soleil, LMFAO, Cee Lo Green, and recent collaborators Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., headlined the big game’s halftime show. They debuted the Madge-Minaj-Maya collab “Give Me All Your Luvin,” while reworking hits like “Music” and “Express Yourself” and even courting controversy thanks to M.I.A.’s extended middle finger. That segued into the promotion for Madonna’s 12th album MDNA, an EDM-informed pop fantasia that hit No. 1 in April and set the stage for the set’s ensuing 88-date promotional tour.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2013 here, or head back to the full list here.)
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