Entertainment Weekly picked Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande for its 2025 Entertainers of the Year list. Both had years packed with hit records, movie and TV appearances, tour dates, and award nods.
Lady Gaga
Producer Andrew Watt penned a tribute essay for the magazine about his collaborator. “There was not a day of creation with her that I took for granted,” Watt told Entertainment Weekly. “Lady Gaga is one of the great storytellers of our time.”
Watt shared he was “often brought to tears” watching her record vocals. “I have never witnessed a human being just straight up going for it in that way before,” he wrote.
The singer dropped her sixth studio album, Mayhem, in March. She’d debuted the single “Abracadabra” during the GRAMMYs in February, where she won the award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance with Bruno Mars for “Die With a Smile.” Entertainment Weekly named “Abracadabra” the Best Song of 2025 and ranked Mayhem at number five in its Best Albums of the Year.
She hosted and performed as musical guest on Saturday Night Live in March. Then in April, she headlined the opening night of Coachella with a five-act production that became her Mayhem Ball Tour. The tour kicked off in July in the United States, went international in September, and will return to America in February before wrapping in April in New York.
Lady Gaga performed at a free concert on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach that drew 2.5 million people, the biggest free concert by a female artist. She won a Sports Emmy in May for music direction after singing “Hold My Hand” before the Super Bowl, putting her one award away from EGOT status. She also guest-starred on season two of Netflix’s Wednesday as teacher Rosaline Rotwood.
In November, she earned seven GRAMMY nominations for Mayhem. These included Album of the Year and Record and Song of the Year for “Abracadabra.”
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande and her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo received tributes from fellow cast member Jeff Goldblum. “Her bright, crystalline voice carries both the optimism Glinda projects and the longing she tries so hard to conceal,” Goldblum told Entertainment Weekly. “Together, Cynthia and Ariana create a rare dynamic that feels like a genuine exchange of emotional energy, each of them deepening the other’s performance in ways that anchor the story.”
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