By Raphael Miranda
The two current musicians that will stand the test of time will be Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
What they have accomplished and are currently doing cannot be matched and will most likely not be matched by any current artist for a long time.
Beyonce has been making music for two decades and has been at the top of the charts ever since. Having eight number-one hits and 21 top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, she has also had 1 number 1 hit and 10 top 10 hits on the Billboard 200 list.
According to Google, Beyonce has sold at least 200 million albums worldwide making her one of the best-selling musicians of all time. She also has many awards including 16 AMA wins, 27 Billboard wins, 30 VMA wins (most all time), 32 Grammy wins (most all time), and 35 BET wins (most all time) making her one of the most awarded artists of all time.
Beyonce’s Renaissance tour according to Forbes has grossed over 579 million making her the 7th highest-grossing tour of all time and the highest-grossing female tour of all time breaking Madonna’s record.
She is also a PHENOMENAL vocalist.
As for T-Swift, she is also a musical juggernaut who has been at the top of the music industry for 17 years. Her Billboard chart history includes 9 number 1 hits and 42 top ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 with 12 number one hits and 15 top 10 hits on the Billboard 200 chart list.
She, just like Beyonce, has also sold 200 million albums worldwide making her one of the best-selling artists of all time.
Taylor has also won her fair share of awards winning 603 in total making her one of the most awarded artists of all time. Some of the awards that she has won are 40 AMA wins (most all-time), 29 Billboard wins, 25 BMI country wins, 34 BMI pop wins, 101 Guinness world records, 23 VMA wins, and 12 Grammy wins three of which are Album of the Year making her the only female artist to win three. She is also the fourth artist to win three and she is also one of the youngest artists to win Album of the Year.
Although Taylor’s tour is estimated to gross over a billion dollars according to Billboard.
Taylor is also one of the best lyrical artists of the 21st century and maybe one of the best of all time. I know a lot of people will agree with Beyonce being one of the current artists to stand the test of time but a lot of those people will not agree with Taylor.
As for why that is, I do not know. While yes Taylor does get a lot of praise for being an incredible musician many people online do not agree as I am constantly seeing her being hated on and discredited for success. Many people discredit her success because of Kanye and her being white, both of which aren't true.
Taylor’s album "Fearless" came out in 2009 selling 12 million copies worldwide, charting number on the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks with “You Belong With Me” charting #2 and “Love Story” charting #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and winning Album of the Year which was before the 2009 VMAs, so no Kanye did not have any impact on her career.
As for her being white, that has nothing to do with her being successful as there are many artists who aren’t white who are as successful if not more successful than her such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, Aretha Franklin, and many more.
People also discredit her songwriting ability by saying she can only write about breakups and boys which is also far from the truth as she has many songs and I mean many songs that are not about her breakups with men. For example, “Folklore” and “Evermore” are two albums with a total of 31 songs combined with over half of the songs being completely fictional and made up stories she made, only a handful of songs being personal ones.
So before anyone says anything about her songs and her writing ability based on the same songs constantly coming on the radio, try and actually listen to the rest of her songs before saying anything.
Overall, while there are many amazing musicians currently, none of them are even close to touching the level of success or impact of Taylor Swift or Beyonce, two legends who will go down as the best to ever do it.