Post Malone, Morgan Wallen and More Included on Billboard's Top Artists of the 21st Century Ranking

Given we're now a quarter of the way into 2000’s, Billboard have decided to compile all their Hot 100 and Billboard 200 data to devise a list of the Top Artists of the 21st Century.

Country music's ongoing resurgence in popularity is highly visible throughout the ranking, with Morgan Wallen landing at No. 13, ahead of Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Kendrick Lamar and other globally renowned stars.

This is made all the more impressive by the fact that Morgan Wallen only achieved his first Hot 100-charting song, ‘Up Down’ with Florida Georgia Line, in 2018, with many artists on Billboard's new list releasing music throughout the 21st Century.

It's an incredible feat for the Sneedville crooner, but not an altogether surprising one, given how Morgan Wallen has been a fixture on the Billboard all-genre charts for the past few years. For instance, Wallen's 2021 album, Dangerous, broke the record for the longest-running Top 10 Billboard 200 album by a singular artist.

Four years since its release, Dangerous remains at No. 15 on the Billboard 200, having spent a staggering 208 weeks on the chart in total. Dangerous also holds the record for the most weeks spent at the peak of the Billboard Country Albums chart.

Similarly, despite being nearly two years old, Morgan Wallen's follow-up album, One Thing At A Time, has spent 96 weeks on the chart, and currently sits at No. 8 on the Billboard 200, ahead of more recent projects, such as Post Malone's F-1Trillion, Tyler, the Creator's CHROMAKOPIA, Gracie Abrams’ The Secret Of Us and more.

Additionally, Morgan Wallen's Hot 100 performance in recent years has been second-to-none in country music, with ‘Last Night’ spending a whopping 16 weeks at No. 1 in 2023 and being crowned the Top Hot 100 Song at the Billboard Music Awards later that year. Since then, Wallen has picked up two further Hot 100 No. 1s, ‘Love Somebody’ and ‘I Had Some Help’, the latter a duet with Post Malone.

Post Malone has finished even higher than Morgan Wallen on Billboard's Top Artists of the 21st Century list, with the ‘Chemical’ hitmaker landing at No. 4 on the list, falling behind only Rihanna, Drake and Taylor Swift who take the No. 3, 2 and 1 spots respectively.

Of course, while he is now considered part of the country world, Post Malone's positioning is largely a result of his pre-country material, with the ‘Guy For That’ singer-songwriter still holding the record for the most Diamond-certified singles in history, as well as having the only song to ever go Double-Diamond, ‘Sunflower’ with Swae Lee.

Other country artists to make it into Billboard's Top Artists of the 21st Century include Carrie Underwood (No. 33), Luke Combs (No. 40), Kenny Chesney (No. 42), Rascal Flatts (No. 48), Luke Bryan (No. 57), Toby Keith (No. 58), Tim McGraw (No. 60), Jason Aldean (No. 61), Lady A (No. 64), Blake Shelton (No. 80), Kid Rock (No. 83), Florida Georgia Line (No. 86), Keith Urban (No. 92) and Alan Jackson (No. 99).

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