For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 all the next two weeks. Last week, we revealed our Honorable Mentions artists for 2025 as well as our Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year artists. Now, we reach No. 3 on our list with an artist who is no stranger to the top of these rankings, but who got back closer to the top this year than she had in a little while now: Lady Gaga.
Listen to our Greatest Pop Stars podcast discussion about Lady Gaga’s year of giving fans everything they could possibly want here, and find the rest of our updating top 10 list with all our corresponding essays and pods here.
If you needed a sign that 2025 was destined to be a big one for Lady Gaga, look no further than when she started the year by immediately scoring her sixth Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit.
Once the tinsel settled on Mariah’s annual eggnog-fueled reign atop the chart, the first non-Christmas No. 1 of 2025 was Bruno Mars and Gaga’s “Die With a Smile,” the August 2024-released duet that willed its way to the top nearly half a year later. “I’m sending love, peace and absolutely as much joy as possible for 2025,” Gaga told fans in a Jan. 7 TikTok video after the No. 1 news. “Thank you for making the beginning of mine so special.” (She also marked the achievement by noting just how long she’s been riding at the top of this pop game: “I can’t believe I’ve had two No. 1s in three different decades that I’ve been releasing my music.”)
And she was just getting started: As she revealed in a late 2024 interview, “Die With a Smile” was the “missing piece” on the track list for her yet-untitled LG7 project, and as the hit duet dominated the top of the Hot 100 for five nonconsecutive weeks to start the year (not to mention a total 18 weeks atop the Billboard Global 200), Gaga ramped up anticipation for her seventh album with a mysterious countdown clock to Jan. 27. It all led to billboards around New York City followed by the official announcement on Instagram: “MAYHEM coming March 7.”
Over the next month, Gaga was omnipresent at major events – but while she had a new project to promote, she seemed much more focused on a series of natural disasters and urgent social issues than her album cycle. At Jan. 30’s FireAid, she was the final artist to hit the stage at the benefit concert, performing the one-off song “All I Need Is Time” that she and fiancé Michael Polansky wrote for victims of the January wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles County (“It’s just for tonight. It’s just for you”).
At the 2025 Grammys the following weekend (Feb. 2), she hit the stage with Mars, but instead of “Die With a Smile,” they once again honored wildfire victims with The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” — and when the duo took home the best pop duo/group performance Grammy for their Hot 100-topping duet later that night, Gaga shifted the spotlight to the trans community, imploring in her speech, “Trans people are not invisible. Trans people deserve love. The queer community deserves to be lifted up. Music is love.” Finally, at the 2025 Super Bowl on Feb. 9, Gaga was there again, this time performing her Oscar-nominated Top Gun: Maverick song “Hold My Hand” ahead of the game on Bourbon Street in honor of victims of the New Orleans terror attack, Hurricane Helene, and the L.A. wildfires. (The reverent tribute would even go on to win a Sports Emmy in May, for outstanding music direction.)
That’s not to say Gaga didn’t find time to squeeze in some Mayhem promo along the way, including the bombastic song and music video premiere during a Grammys commercial break of the track that would come to define the LG7 era: “Abracadabra.” The choreography-heavy visual marked a return to dance-pop form for Gaga and launched countless TikTok videos from legions of Little Monsters, including support from famous fans like ROSÉ (“QUEEN”) and Halsey (“New reason to live just dropped”) and a No. 1 debut on the Hot Dance/Pop Songs chart. Other pre-Mayhem promo included a spicy sit-down with Hot Ones, confirming “Telephone” part 2 with Beyoncé via Vanity Fair’s lie detector test, and subbing for Justin Timberlake on “D–k in a Box” at the Feb. 15 SNL50 concert.
On March 7, the Mayhem moment finally arrived, and as “Abracadabra” signaled, there were a lot of classic Gaga elements at play, including dark pop, examinations into fame and self, and even Zombieboys. That wasn’t an accident: “I really wanted to allow myself to just follow the music,” Gaga told Billboard’s Stephen Daw of letting the music take the lead. “By doing that, it started to slowly remind me of my earlier work.” Gaga’s release-week victory lap included pulling double-duty as host and musical guest of Saturday Night Live, which marked the live debuts of both “Abracadabra” and “Killah” from the new album. It all led to a resounding No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200, with the biggest streaming week of Gaga’s career, and 10 of its tracks landing on the Hot 100. Mayhem also debuted at No. 1 on Top Dance Albums, becoming Gaga’s record-breaking eighth leader (surpassing Louie DeVito for the most in the chart’s 24-year history).
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Next, it was time to bring the Mayhem to a stage near you: On March 26, Gaga announced The Mayhem Ball tour as her first arena trek since 2018, after conquering stadiums on The Chromatica Ball. (She announced an initial 32 dates kicking off in July, but the total has now blossomed to 87 shows across the globe.) Before the Ball, the first major live performance following the album’s release was Gaga headlining two Coachella weekends in April, “a genius commentary on fame.” “Tonight, she delivered a poignant and entertaining take on what it means to be a superstar — and did so while further solidifying her own role as one of the biggest,” Havens wrote, noting that the two-hour, four-act performance leaned heavily on the just-released Mayhem.
Gaga also made her triumphant return to Mexico later that month for the first time in 13 years, playing for 61,000 fans at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City. But why not play for 40 times more fans the next week? On May 4, Gaga reportedly drew 2.5 million fans to a free concert at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, marking her first concert in Brazil in a decade and becoming the highest-attended concert by a female artist in history.
The Mayhem Ball launched in July, kicking off at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas with what Billboard’s Joe Lynch called “a theatrical, electric and delicious live affair.” By September, the tour had already surpassed $100 million in ticket sales for just its first North American leg, according to Billboard Boxscore, making it the highest-grossing leg of any Gaga tour yet. She didn’t let the tour slow down other appearances either: On Sept. 7, the pop superstar popped over to Long Island’s UBS Arena to pick up the artist of the year award at the MTV VMAs (along with three other trophies from her show-leading 12 nods) before performing at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden later that night.
Oh, and did we mention her brand-new song? On Sept. 3, Gaga dropped “The Dead Dance” and a Tim Burton-directed music video (just in time for Halloween!) ahead of her season 2 cameo on Netflix’s Wednesday as ghostly Nevermore professor Rosaline Rotwood. Less than a week later, she live-debuted the song – one of three new tracks on a Mayhem reissue — during a satellite performance on the VMAs.
To wrap the year up in a bow, on Dec. 9, “Die With a Smile” was announced as the 2025 year-end No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 – Gaga’s first time topping the year-end Hot 100, after just missing the mark with in 2009 with the No. 2-ranking “Poker Face.” And 2026 is looking pretty bright too, as Gaga heads into this weekend’s Grammy Awards with seven nominations, including three in the Big Four categories: album of the year for Mayhem and record and song of the year for “Abracadabra.” It was also revealed in October that she’ll have a role in May’s sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, though it’s unclear whether she’ll be playing herself or a character.
What is clear: As Lady Gaga enters her third decade of pop stardom, her powers only seem to be growing. As she said back in March when she accepted the Innovator Award at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, “Even though the world might consider a woman in her late 30s old for a pop star — which is insane — I promise that I’m just getting warmed up.” After wrapping one of her most potent years yet, we’re sure Gaga’s next magic trick is just around the corner.
Listen to our Lady Gaga Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 podcast discussion here, check back for our No. 2 artist on Thursday, and then it’s time for the announcement of our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of 2025 on Friday, Jan. 30!
