Morgan Wallen finishes atop Billboard’s year-end Top Artists chart for the first time following the monster success of his 2025 album I’m the Problem and its associated hit songs. The continued chart performance of his earlier smash albums One Thing at a Time and Dangerous: The Double Album also helped fuel the victory.
I’m the Problem, which ranks at No. 2 on the year-end Billboard 200 Albums recap, debuted at No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200 dated May 31 and spent 12 weeks leading the list during the annual eligibility period (see methodology below).
Wallen’s Top Artists trophy was also earned in part by his success on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 songs chart during the chart year, placing more titles on the list (41) than any other act. Of those, nine reached the top 10, including “What I Want” (featuring Tate McRae), which spent a week at No. 1 upon its debut in May.
Wallen is the first act who primarily records country music to crown the Top Artists list since 2009, when Taylor Swift took home her first win in the annual recap. That year, she was also No. 1 on the year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart with her second full-length, Fearless. (She would pivot to a mostly pop career in 2014 with her 1989 album.) Wallen is only the second male country act to be the year-end top artist after Garth Brooks, who scored back-to-back year-end wins in 1992 and 1993. (The year-end Top Artists recap began in 1981.)
Swift also looms large on the 2025 year-end rankings, as her recently released The Life of a Showgirl is No. 1 on the year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart. It’s the fifth time she has ruled that roundup, and she remains the only act to have the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 album more than three times.
The Life of a Showgirl’s year-end feat is especially remarkable considering it had only one week of activity on the Billboard 200 during the eligibility period. It debuted at No. 1 on the list dated Oct. 18 — the final week of the chart year — with a modern-era weekly record of 4 million equivalent album units earned in its first week, according to Luminate.
Swift led the 2024 year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart with The Tortured Poets Department, and in turn, she becomes the first act to have the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 album in consecutive years with two different titles since Elton John in 1974 (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and 1975 (Greatest Hits). In between John and Swift, two artists went back-to-back but with the same albums: Michael Jackson with Thriller in 1983 and 1984 and Adele with 21 in 2011 and 2012.
Wallen and Swift are the year’s top male artist and top female artist, respectively, while the top duo/group is the animated KPop Demon Hunters girl group HUNTR/X, voiced by real-life singers EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI. The trio from the smash Netflix film scored four hits on the weekly Hot 100 in 2025, including the No. 1 “Golden.” Alex Warren is 2025’s top new artist following his massive success with “Ordinary,” which spent 10 weeks atop the Hot 100, while his album You’ll Be Alright, Kid reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200.
The year-end No. 1 on the Hot 100 Songs chart is “Die With a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. The track led the Hot 100 for five weeks.
Billboard’s year-end music charts represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts from Oct. 26, 2024, through Oct. 18, 2025. Rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the entries appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology detail, and the October-October time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate. The Top Artists and Top New Artists categories rank the best-performing acts, and new acts, of the year based on activity on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100, as well as Billboard Boxscore (touring), for the 2025 tracking period.
