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(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Miley Cyrus was our Greatest Pop Star of 2013 — with our ’13 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)
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Miley Cyrus reinvented herself in 2013 — in large part, because she needed to.
Three years earlier, the former Disney Channel star — best known as the world-conquering kids’ character Hannah Montana — had attempted to kickstart an adult career with an album titled Can’t Be Tamed, which ditched her early pop-rock for swaggering electro-pop. Cyrus had scored hits prior to this hard pivot to a more mature sound, including 2009’s surprise smash “Party in the U.S.A.,” but Can’t Be Tamed quickly killed her momentum, thanks to a string of singles that failed to touch Top 40 radio, and a persona that felt uninspired alongside edgier new contemporaries like Lady Gaga and Kesha.
Cyrus didn’t release music for three years; in the interim, she declined touring Can’t Be Tamed in North America, left her record label, co-starred in a few mediocre films and made headlines for a TMZ video in which she was filmed with a bong. When the 20-year-old Cyrus announced the release of a new single in early 2013, her musical stardom was perceived as an uncertainty at best. Yet that single, “We Can’t Stop,” proved to be more than a resuscitation: co-produced by rap auteur Mike WiLL Made-It and originally intended for Rihanna, the song and its house-party-set music video repainted Cyrus as a twerk-happy firecracker, ready to simultaneously invigorate top 40 radio and provoke conversations about hip-hop culture appropriation.
The woozy R&B production and thinly veiled drug references on “We Can’t Stop” effectively left Cyrus’ Hannah Montana days in the rearview, and the song was an immediate hit, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. She topped it with its follow-up, “Wrecking Ball,” which became her first Hot 100 chart-topper; the stirring power ballad led to the No. 1 bow of Bangerz, a grab-bag of a pop album with guest spots from Future and Britney Spears, in October 2013.
To recap Cyrus’ chart achievements in 2013 would help underscore the success of the former teen star’s comeback bid that year, yet it wouldn’t capture her enormity. Bruno Mars, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams all enjoyed memorable 2013s, but no artist produced anywhere near as many unforgettable visual moments that year as Cyrus.
Of course, there was her infamous twerk-grind and foam finger delinquency alongside Robin Thicke when the pair mashed up “We Can’t Stop” and “Blurred Lines” at the MTV Video Music Awards; in one of the most memorable (and infamous) VMAs performances of the past decade, Cyrus summarily shocked parents who hadn’t been paying attention to her R-rated renaissance. Yet she also used music videos to present her new worldview in must-see fashion, particularly the “Wrecking Ball” music video, which featured Cyrus swinging naked upon the titular object, as well as the “We Can’t Stop” clip, her shock of blonde hair announcing a new era, her tongue wagging throughout the mischief.
The Bangerz era was a huge gamble on a new sound and style that could have had the former Hannah Montana fall flat on her face, but instead bestowed Cyrus with her most fruitful commercial run to date, effectively setting up her adult career. Cyrus has since dabbled in psychedelica, country-pop, disco and R&B, to varying degrees of success, always with an admirable sense of confidence and curiosity. Cyrus has continued exploring well into the 2020s — even resulting in further chart-topping success — but the way she remolded the zeitgeist to fit her hedonistic pop vision in 2013 will not soon be forgotten.
Honorable Mention: Pharrell (Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” Despicable Me 2 soundtrack), Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (“Thrift Shop,” “Can’t Hold Us,” “Same Love”), Bruno Mars (“When I Was Your Man,” “Treasure,” Moonshine Jungle Tour)
Rookie of the Year: Lorde
At the beginning of 2013, Ella Yelich-O’Connor was a 16-year-old from Auckland, New Zealand who had just released her debut EP on SoundCloud for free; within 12 months, the world had embraced her bass-heavy alt-pop. The second track on that EP, a sardonic assessment of celebrity fortune titled “Royals,” spent nine weeks atop the Hot 100 chart and would eventually win the song of the year Grammy. Lorde’s meticulous songwriting ensured that she would outgrow her breakthrough hit, as her debut album, 2013’s Pure Heroine, was lauded by critics and contained another top 10 hit in “Team.”
Comeback of the Year: Daft Punk
The French robots of Daft Punk had been long out of service as 2013 rolled around, at least as hitmakers: the duo’s days of dance smashes had given way to an uneven album (2005’s Human After All), an experimental film soundtrack (2010’s Tron: Legacy) and years of silence. Random Access Memories was an expansive mash note to the music that had influenced Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo in the 1970s and 1980s — in 2014, it became one of the weirdest-ever album of the year Grammy winners — but the album was anchored by “Get Lucky,” a disco-funk smash featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, undeniable enough to transcend its EDM-heavy era of existence and effectively play against type. Daft Punk beamed back into our lives for one summer to boogie, and never totally returned again, before officially breaking up in 2021.
(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 2014 here, or head back to the full list here.)