Music of the decade: these are the most influential pop stars of the past decade

Taylor Swift: The Normal

VALERIE MACON / AFP

Taylor Swift: representative of a mainstream that may no longer exist

Taylor Swift is the biggest and most unlikely pop star of the decade. Because it was actually a decade of drifting apart, arguing, social breaks. Whether it was populism or gender relations: the questions of identity were always discussed as questions of social division. And then there's Taylor Swift . The superstar without a tattoo, without a drug scandal, without controversial interviews, without a sex video. The woman who just writes good songs. Who prefers to remain vague when it comes to politics. Has the girlfriends and is feminist, but also doesn't make it a huge thing. The boys look behind and carry an impressive list of ex-friends with them. But now, in her late twenties, she wonders if it really was with the men and when she actually meets the one with whom she wants to start a family. Taylor Swift is perfectly normal - to say it in one word. It represents a mainstream, which may only exist as a longing, no longer as a reality in the diverging societies of the western world. But one has to do it. And Taylor Swift just does it pretty well. Tobias Rapp

Beyoncé and Solange: The Goddesses

AP

Beyoncé Knowles: It's not for nothing that she is called "Queen Bey"

When Taylor Swift, see above, was recently awarded the title of "Artist of the Decade" at the American Music Awards, many should have been surprised. Who, if not Beyoncé Knowles, defined this music and pop culture decade?

But the music industry, especially the US, is still a white industry, despite the hip-hop mainstream, in which African-American artists have to fight for self-determination. Beyoncé has shown how to do this several times: in 2013 she invented the now notorious album release out of the blue, without promo or media support. "Beyoncé" topped the charts - making the singer the first US artist to do five number one albums in a row. She demonstrated impressively that the traditional gatekeeper rules of the culture industry can be handled with loyal fan bases, YouTube and Instagram accounts. In 2016, probably the most political year of this decade, with "Lemonade" she published her radiant audiovisual all-round statement on topics such as #BlackLivesMatter, feminism, Afro-American cultural and cultural affinities - and ultimately also her marriage to rap, which at that time was broken -Mogul Jay-Z flowed.

REUTERS

As long as Knowles: more intellectual and artful pop approach

With a provocative appearance at the Superbowl and later, triumphantly, at the Coachella Festival 2018, she consolidated her status as an autonomous, glamorous and inherently political pop star who, at 38, is always approachable, tradition-conscious and family-centered. The sustainable emancipation of African-American pop culture in the second half of the decade would have been far less effective without its mediation into the white mainstream. The only one who could contest this position in the foreseeable future is her younger sister Solange with her more artistic and intellectual pop approach. In 2016 she presented her own vision of a confident afro-centric culture with "A Seat At The Table" - and released "When I Get Home", one of the pop albums that defined 2019. Sisters are doing it . Not just for yourself. Andreas Borcholte

Helene Fischer: The Unleashed

AFP

Helene Fischer: The German Schlager Beyoncé?

Is Helene Fischer the German Beyoncé? No other in Germany built the show stairs further to the sky, no other listed the female self-assertion as a larger athletic spectacle. Like Beyoncé with Jay-Z, Helene rehearsed a ride with Florian Silbereisen over the decade into Pop Olympus, after which the mighty men only looked like stirrup holders for their rushing overwives. But despite the similarity to the US model: Soul is not the word for Fischer's music, it is still a hit through and through. However, she undertook this original German song form between her albums "Farbenspiel" (2013) and "Helene Fischer" (2017); she blew up the more technoid Teutonic pop from the four-quarter steel corset of the Disco-Fox and the female lust from the chains of monogamous bliss. We forgive her for occasionally falling far short of her own modernization success. However, she did not lastly think that she had to unintentionally initiate a new career section as an English fanfaring Powerballad soldier. Now we ask a bit anxiously whether Helene Fischer might just be the German Celine Dion. Christian Buss

Kendrick Lamar: The Poet

Getty Images for NARAS

Kendrick Lamar: The Tornness of Afro-American Reality

At a time when hip-hop lifestyle has become mainstream and it is a good thing among the most successful musicians of the genre to set up streaming services and fashion brands, Kendrick Lamar reminds more than many of his colleagues that hip-hop is not just that Bling-bling and pose is, but also poetry and politics. The 32-year-old, a voice of the # BlackLivesMatter movement, has won 13 Grammys in the past years and in 2018, as the first rapper ever, to win the Pulitzer Prize. With "To Pimp a Butterfly" he succeeded (alongside Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy") the most innovative rap album of the decade: The torn African-American reality between pride and pain, self-love and self-loathing gave Kendrick Lamar a contemporary sound that gave up is based on the traditions of black music: jazz, soul and funk. Jurek Skrobala

Drake: The shape shifter

Getty Images

Rap innovator Drake: doesn't shy away from emotions or vocals

The beard was longer at some point, otherwise little has changed on the exterior of Aubrey Graham over the past ten years. The fact that he rose to become the most streamed artist in the world during the same period has a lot to do with his inner change: Drake / Drizzy / Champagne Papi is the great shape shifter of pop. Starting out as a languishing understanding of women ("Hold On, We're Going Home"), Graham skinned to a hip-hop innovator who was not shy about singing ("Hotline Bling") and brought dancehall sounds into the mainstream ("One Dance" ). The Canadian then showed his ass violin side with the Meek Mill diss "Charged Up" and then ended the decade as a feminist ally with "Nice for What". The most amazing thing about Drake's career, however, is how organic she looks with all the change. Rapping may be better for others, but he alone has the career flow. Hannah Pilarczyk

Ariana Grande: The Refined

AFP

Ariana Grande: ponytail and feminism

"Thank you, next / I'm so fucking greatful for my ex", Ariana Grande sang on the title track of her album "thank u, next" in 2019. Bitchy, disposable attitude in one moment, raw emotional maturity in the next: Grande's career is shaped by such balancing act. Where other female pop stars of their caliber changed their images every year, appropriated themselves with cowboy hat Americana (Lady Gaga) or had their woke awakening (Katy Perry), refined and complicated Grande their simply: Feminism came to long-length ponytails and knee-high boots , Irony and political commitment on top . In parallel, their sound did not change fundamentally, but gradually to smart pop with real emotional force. Five Grammy nominations point the way: In 2020, Grande's rise will only continue. Hannah Pilarczyk

BTS: The challengers

REUTERS

K-Pop Stars BTS: Border crossing of the heterosexual boy band norm

What girl and boy bands were for the nineties is the seven-member Korean group BTS for the nineties: stadiums sold out worldwide and the first band from Korea that made it to number one on the US billboard charts in 2018 with an album , BTS members have been carefully selected to challenge generic synthetic idol culture in Korea. They act with a different authenticity than was previously conceivable in the K-Pop market. And they mostly write their own songs. The lyrics reflect the complex life of teenagers in Korea. BTS speak openly about their fears and struggles, they dance as if Janet Jackson had personally taught them. And they play with each other with a homoerotic attraction that can be read as a crossing of the heterosexual norm. Enrico Ippolito

Ed Sheeran: The Omnipresent

AP

Ed Sheeran: Even his hair color became a trend talk

There is no question that Ed Sheeran was one of the most commercially successful pop stars of the decade. Several million copies of his three albums titled "+", "x" and "÷" were sold worldwide; as British star of the decade, at most Adele competes with him - but her talent is so obviously outstanding that she would have become a star in any decade. But Sheeran? It just always fits in anywhere. Too normal? "Normcore" became a trend term in the decade. And even red hair was much discussed in the late decade. When his career started, Sheeran could still be seen as an extension of the folk revival, but about collaborations with Beyoncé, Eminem, Justin Bieber and who else, he positioned himself as universally as we listen to music in Spotify: times a hip -Hop track, sometimes a soul album, sometimes the pop playlist ... on which Ed Sheeran was almost always heard. Felix Bayer

Frank Ocean: The Radical

REUTERS

Frank Ocean: storyteller that breaks genres

There is so much truth, innocence and desire in his voice! Frank Ocean has introduced a new level of emotion to R&B and rap in the past decade. The now 32-year-old storyteller released his debut album "Channel Orange" in 2012 and negotiated the big issues: loneliness, love, mortality, lust, religion. His ambiguously poetic texts are paired with an idiosyncratic sound. The art of Ocean is above all to let the two find each other symbiotically. What makes Ocean so successful? He plays with the expectations of his fans like no other. They had to wait four years for his second album ("Endless") - and only 48 hours later he released the masterpiece "Blonde". Ocean breaks all boundaries and opens up to a radical queerness - privately and musically. Enrico Ippolito

Kanye West: The Genius

REUTERS

Kanye West: Awesome, but also a bit crazy

This turbulent decade has radicalized many, including some pop stars. If you look at Kanye West's ten years exclusively from the perspective of his recent trials and tribulations - Trump's sympathy and God complex - it will certainly be difficult to transpose the 42-year-old rapper and producer as brilliant. But how annoyingly perverse and perverse, however neurotic and narcissistic West may always be, the arrival of African-American hip-hop culture in the pop mainstream of the decade is largely thanks to his visions of sound and aspiration. Already in 2008 he laid the defining sound tracks for the entire following decade with the Roland TR-808 synthetic sounds and the modulated autotune vocals of his ballad album "808 & Heartbreak". Anyone who hears the popular trap and cloud rap of German chart artists like Capital Bra will find the blueprint in West's idiosyncratic pioneering work. With his album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy", which conquered all genres, he created one of the defining pop artworks of the decade in autumn 2010. Three years later, West anticipated the re-politicization of African-American music with the rugged "Yeezus", which culminated in Beyoncé's "Lemonade" and Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp A Butterfly" or D'Angelo's "Black Messiah" in 2016. "Yeezy" likes to forgive the fact that his subsequent work often seemed erratic, unfocused and blown out, as did the soap opera of his private life with his wife Kim Kardashian or his megalomania. Even if you ignore his musical achievements: Without Kanye West, the ten years of pop would have been a lot drearier and boring. Andreas Borcholte