We think of the iconicity of our favorite 21st century pop stars mostly in terms of the ways we had for long before: smash hits and blockbuster albums, classic music videos and sold-out tours, bold fashion statements and unforgettable TV and film appearances. But in the past 20 years, another crucial way in which these artists enter pop culture immortality has emerged, and it’s the one they have close to zero control over.
Memes have become an essential mode for how very online pop fans — basically all pop fans in 2025 — celebrate, engage with and occasionally even lightly poke fun at their favorite pop stars. But those pop stars don’t write, plan or release those memes, and often times they either refuse to interact with them or don’t acknowledge them until they’ve long run their course. They may occasionally drop a video or post or performance with one or more highly memeable moments, but whether or not they hit is still at the mercy of the wild and unpredictable whims of the internet, and what we all choose to latch onto. That’s the beauty of pop star memes: They’re truly up to us to decide on, and they can’t ever be forced.
But while there have been countless lists over the decades of the greatest pop albums, singles, videos and performances, there have been far fewer celebrating the greatest such internet moments. We at Billboard are hoping to start correcting that, with our list of the 100 greatest pop star memes of all time — collecting all the most legendary memes directly or even indirectly involving pop hitmakers of note.
By “all time,” of course, we’re mostly talking about those past 20 years — when the social media age permanently changed the way we interacted with culture and with one another, and gave these memes multiple global platforms over which to reach ubiquity. But we also threw in a few pre-digital examples to show how these adaptable forms of in-jokey fan-artist interactions may have greater opportunity for mass exposure in the 21st century, but they existed in the culture well before that. And we’re also going right up to present day — with 2025 giving us some already-legendary memes from Justin Bieber, Kendrick Lamar, Morgan Wallen and plenty more.
Check out our list below, enjoy reliving a lifetime in iconic pop star memes, and feel free to let us know about the dozens saved to your phone you can’t believe we left out.
