Despite the pandemic, the music industry has thrived. There are those who decided to self-publish, and there are those who used online platforms to reach out to a wider audience.
Who are these artists? Why do people listen to them while on the train for while playing at a casino online? Let us take a look at the biggest artists and singers who made it big in the music world in 2021.
1. Justin Bieber
His career is not over. Justin is the youngest singer to be famous in the entire world. When he was 16, his debut album, My Life 2.0, made him the youngest star to hit the Billboard 200.
Although Justin had ups and downs in his personal life, he never went down the drain as an artist. His popularity kept rising, and nothing was stopping him. He won two Grammys, 21 Music Awards for MTV, 20 music awards from Billboard, and many more.
So far, he has released six albums, the latest of which was Justice in 2021. Now, full of tattoos, he is still the reigning pop superstar in the world.
2. Marissa Nadler
Marissa released her ninth album in 2021, The Path of the Clouds. Her music is somewhat dark, taking the listener to a realm of limbo between life and death. There are three songs about people who disappeared and were never found again in this album. She learned of these stories from a TV show.
Marissa has several self-released albums, but The Path of Clouds is not one of them. Instead, this album found its origins in the Covid-19 pandemic. Escape is the central theme of the album, and Marissa infused her personal experiences with the horrible crimes she saw on TV.
Marissa Nadler has around 140,000 listeners on Spotify, and her most popular song is Famous Blue Raincoat, which has 2.9 million streams.
3. Future Teens
Deliberately Alive is the album that catapulted Future Teens into the limelight in 2021. The self-described “bummer pop” band rose to fame in 2017 and has consistently kept up with the demands of their industry.
The latest album is witty and thoughtful. However, this one is albeit economical as it only has five songs. Despite this, the album feels like a full-length one. Critics have a consensus that this album shows that the band is maturing.
According to Daniel Radin, the band’s vocalist and guitarist, the band began as a joke. He is also the longest-standing member of the band. In the first release, he made 25 floppy disks of the album and sold all of them.
4. Adele
Who does not know Adele? Dubbed as the queen of break-up ballad, she released her fourth studio album in November. The album’s name is 30.
This album dominated the UK charts with double number 1, and she managed to score the highest opening week for an album in that same year. Her album had the biggest first-week sales release since Ed Sheeran back in 2017.
The lead single from this album is Easy on Me. It has become Adele’s longest-running chart-topper, and it had 25 million streams in the UK.
Meanwhile, in the US, 30 was the biggest-selling album of the year, and it only took three days. Adele announced this album at a Las Vegas concert.
5. Bad Bunny
In Spotify’s world, Bad Bunny has the biggest number of streams on the platform. From January to November of 2021, Bad Bunny has 9.1 billion streams. In 2020, he had 9.3 billion streams.
Bad Bunny is a Puerto Rican artist, and his kind of music is close to reggae. Bad Bunny worked with artist Tommy Torrest in 2021.
In 2021, he appeared in Time’s annual list of 100 most influential people in the world. To date, he is the most-streamed artist on the Spotify platform for the second year in a row.
Bad Bunny is popular because he combines his music with other elements. Critics describe his music as rap with a conversational tone.
6. Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia is the breakout artist of 2021. Her debut album, Sour, topped music charts and sparked a TikTok mania. She was the obsession of that year.
Olivia managed to put two of her three singles at the top of Billboard charts at the age of 18. The entire album, Sour, went straight to number one. Born in America, she had a natural ability to sing and dance, and this was evident when she was a child.
She appeared in singing competitions as a kid, and her YouTube videos became viral. She impressed people in Disney, and it was in 2016 when she was cast as Paige Olvera on a show that ran for two seasons. Eventually, she moved out of the TV screen and released her album.
