BIG CHAMPAGNE'S TOP ARTISTS OF THE YEAR

Written by LNTV Staff / Photography by: Jordan Nicholson, Live Nation / Alexandra Waespi / Shareif Ziyadat, FilmMagic / Jeremy Deputat, PictureGroup / Paige K Parsons, Live Nation / Jedd Lopez, One Nation / Kevin Mazur, WireImage / January 03, 2017

We love Big Champagne end of year round ups. They do the math on streams, downloads, radio, socials and even regular album sales to let you know who really came out as the top artists of 2016. It comes as no surprise that some favorites were named in this year’s list.

We can go ahead talk about the amazingness that was Drake in 2016. Because of 2015’s "Hotline Bling" being a massive hit song and a meme, his album was already predicted to be the hottest of the year. The Views from the 6 must be pretty nice now, Drizzy. As BC said, "He has held the #1 Ultimate 100 Artists spot for 15 weeks, including a 13-week in a row run from May to August, and he’s hasn’t left the Top 10 once all year. That’ll do it.“

Two of our favorite Queens, Bey and Adele, made the list for their unbelievable album releases. BC said of Adele "The incredible sales numbers allowed her to make last year’s Top 20 at #19 with only a few weeks of activity and set her up to begin 2016 from a strong position. She started the year at #1, has mostly lived in the Top 20 with consistency, and has never dropped below #30.” And while we totally agree because numbers don’t lie…

We still worship Queen Bey too. Beyoncé fell into the number 7 slot this year, but is still our number one because she is Beyoncé. As BC says, "been a major story ever since the groundbreaking and unorthodox release of Lemonade.” We couldn’t agree more.

And of course notable is our favorites underdogs Twenty One Pilots. We already wrapped up their year once, and we’ll let you read what Big Champagne had to say, because together we got their year down: "It is quite impressive for an alternative/rock act to have this kind of mainstream success these days. The duo from Columbus, Ohio connects big-time with fans through their unique tunes and engaging live performances. Blurryface was a big step in their evolution as songwriters and musicians, and having such a cool track on the very successful Suicide Squad soundtrack kept the momentum up in a big way.”

You can peep the gallery above to see who all made the list and check out Big Champagne’s list to see who else made the list.