Who is the best artist of the 21st century?

Taylor Swift seems like an easy choice as the best artist of the 21st century - but there is one star who may be more of a favourite in Australia.

It’s been a wild ride for music fans over the past 25 years.

Each format shift — from CDs to MP3s, MySpace to TikTok, the iPod and iTunes downloads to Spotify and Apple Music streams, and the vinyl revival — has created a new wave of overnight pop stars.

Yet there is an elite club of GOTTs (Greatest of This Time because ... The Beatles) who have cultivated pop culture permanence over recent decades.

The club membership is dominated by female pop gamechangers, male hip hop stars and the sad boy singer songwriters.

Who is the greatest of all over the past quarter century?

To celebrate the launch of the new news.com.au app, we’re celebrating the people, places and events we’ll never forget from the first quarter of the 21st century by asking for Australia’s view. Our 25@25 series will finally put to bed the debates you’ve been having at the pub and around dinner tables for years – and some that are just too much fun not to include.

Australians have their favourites.

The influence and impact of billionaire Taylor Swift is undeniable. Pink is an honorary Australian - she loves us and we love her. Beyonce probably gets marked down for NOT COMING HERE since 2013.

Ed Sheeran is another local hero here and breaks stadium box office records every time he tours. As he told the Zane Lowe show recently when his 2017 mega-hit “Shape of You” topped the Apple Music 500 most streamed songs of the past decade, he gets asked to play that song on an acoustic guitar in a Cambodian jungle. It’s been everywhere, man.

But Hot Hits host and pop guru Nic Kelly said Swift is the favourite to win the poll below.

“I feel like I might have some recency bias in this, but I don’t think there’s been anyone that can touch Taylor in the last 25 years,” Kelly said.

“Especially over the last 10 years, her cultural impact, the way that she can turn a city into a TaylorSphere for such a long period of time, the phenomenal amount of ticket sales and the way that even the tickets going on sale turned into an event.

“She has continued to reinvent herself and control her narrative from overexposure when the Reputation album came out to then own the narrative of being overexposed and a bit hated, to then turn it into credibility again with folklore and evermore, and then to just become beloved with the Eras tour, a celebration of someone that’s meant a lot to such a broad range of people, makes her completely undeniable.”

While Swifties love to own a poll on behalf of their queen, Hit Network personality Kelly said there is a Best Artist challenger for Australia’s heart.

Since she burst onto the pop charts with “Get This Party Started” in 2001 and chugged a VB standing on the bar at a showcase gig in Sydney, Pink has gone on to play months-long tours here, and claimed the record for most stadium concerts by an artist in Australia and New Zealand with 20 shows on last year’s Summer Carnival tour.

“I don’t think there are any more passionate fans, in Australia specifically, than Pink fans,” Kelly said.

“She has a complete stranglehold on the live music love of a particular demographic in Australia, the women who started going to shows 15 years ago and Pink is now an event for them.

“If this was a poll on greatest live act, Pink is absolutely up there and continues to bring it time after time. The shows feel so heavily rehearsed, yet so free at the same time. And there’s obviously the acrobatics, which has become a thing of its own. I think the Pink fans might give Taylor Swift a run for her money.”

The poll also throws pop game-changers Adele, Billie Eilish and actual Australian Sia into the mix versus the stream and stadium kings Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran and Eminem.

But what about Drake or Kendrick? Ariana and Rihanna? “WHERE THE HELL IS GAGA?” I hear you protest.

Kelly is with you, pop fans. He says “Drake is absolutely missing from this list” but acknowledges the Anita Max Win Tour in February divided the Canadian rapper’s Aussie fanbase.

Between the gambling ads, the “You All Win A Holiday” cash splash at his concerts and cancelling the final shows for zip reason - and all of it in the shadow of the Kendrick Lamar beef - Drake might be a little on the nose down under.

“The whole time Drake was here most recently, I think it was a little bit of a strange feeling. I mean, he’s here, the first show was on the night of the Super Bowl where Kendrick’s got hundreds of millions of people basically talking about him,” Kelly said.

“Yet he’s had one of his biggest chart hits in a while with Nokia ... and songs like Hotline Bling and One Dance are still so highly streamed and so highly in the Zeitgeist.”

Not just a music lover? Take the other 25@25 polls.

Originally published as Who is the best artist of the 21st century?