Katy Perry, Beyonce, Pharrell Lead Twitter’s Year in Music Charts
Twitter has unveiled their 2014 year-end music rundown, tracking the year’s most tweeted-about artists, albums, songs and music-related events. While the year might end with record low album sales, pop music still rules Twitter. The company revealed that music remains the most tweeted-about subject on the 140-character service, an impressive feat considering Twitter boasts nearly 500 million tweets a day.
Beyoncé’s Beyoncé, despite its surprise arrival in the closing days of 2013, was the most tweeted-about album of 2014, beating out 5 Seconds of Summer’s 5 Seconds of Summer and Taylor Swift’s 1989. Note to artists releasing an LP in 2015: “X” trends well. Three albums with X in their title occupied Number Four through Six on the most tweeted-about albums chart: Michael Jackson’s Xscape, Ed Sheeran’s X and Chris Brown’s X.
If tweets determined the Grammy Song of the Year winner, then Pharrell’s “Happy” would cruise to an award win. Williams’ bouncy Girl single was the most tweeted-about song in 2014. John Legend’s “All of Me,” Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” Ariana Grande’s “Problem” and Lady Gaga’s “Artpop” rounded out the top five.
Surprisingly, Pharrell’s “Happy” landed atop the most tweeted-about song chart despite Williams not even being in the Top 50 on the list of 2014’s most tweeted-about artists. Boy bands dominated that list as One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer held the Number One and Number Two spots, followed by Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.
Katy Perry remains the Queen of Twitter, ranking Number One on both the Most Followed list – a whopping 60 million followers, or 10 million more than President Barack Obama – and the 2014 Biggest Growth List with a 13 million follower increase. The Prism singer is the most followed person on Twitter, music or otherwise, with Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift finishing Number Two and Number Three on both music lists. (Bieber is also Number Two on the most followed list behind Perry and ahead of Number Three President Obama.)
Lady Gaga, who sits in fourth place on the Most Followed Artist list with 42 million followers, gained only 3.7 new followers in 2014, ranking her 18th on the list of musician’s Twitter follower growth. The year’s biggest gainer percentage-wise compared to 2013? Ariana Grande, who nearly doubled her followship this year with 9.5 million new followers.
While pop, R&B and hip-hop were the most popular genres by a wide margin, Twitter also shared the 10 most retweeted rock-centric tweets. Lorde’s epic Photoshop takedown from March generated over 73,000 retweets, putting it Number One on the rock retweet list by a landslide. Paul McCartney’s Ecuador flag-waving photo was retweeted over 7,900 times to place Number Two, ahead of Bruce Springsteen’s High Hopes announcement. Justin Bieber sent out music’s most retweeted tweet with, “You are all worthy no matter what anyone says. Be strong God is with us all. My Beliebers changed my life. I will forever be grateful,” which inspired over 486,000 people to hit those little green arrows.
Twitter also broke down which music events scored the highest tweets per minute (TPM) in 2014. While nothing broke the Internet like Beyoncé’s surprise pregnancy announcement at the 2011 Video Music Awards, Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Super Bowl XLIX halftime performance was the most tweeted-about musical moment, generating 229,533 TPMs. Imagine Dragons and Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy performance was Number Two on the TPM list.
In other interesting 2014 Twitter music statistics, the MTV Europe Music Awards was the most tweeted-about music awards show, beating out both the MTV VMAs and the Grammys. Coachella was the most tweeted-about music festival, ahead of Tomorrow World and the Warped Tour. “#vote5sos” was music’s most popular hashtag, while Justin Bieber’s Beliebers defeated One Direction’s Directioners and Kesha’s Animals to remain the most vocal fan base on Twitter.