Beyonce Knowles aka Queen Bey stands in one corner with over twenty years in music and Lady Gaga aka Mother Monster stands in the other with her little monsters. We won’t lie, choosing the more popular of the two is a daunting task.
Lady Gaga is more popular than Beyoncé. It is extremely difficult to compare two massively popular and successful stars. However, when we compared their chart performance, album sales, and award wins, Lady Gaga came out one point ahead of Beyoncé.
You can read more below about how we came to this conclusion.
Lady Gaga vs. Beyoncé Chart Performance
Since Lady Gaga and Beyoncé are slightly different in their genres, we’ve decided to compare their performances in the pop genre because they both perform in this genre. In order to determine who is more popular, we first looked at performance on the Billboard Hot 100.
Beyoncé takes the lead in this area in part due to the fact that she is had had a solo career that began five years before Lady Gaga. Beyoncé’s solo career also came with the advantage of her already having a fan following from her time in Destiny’s Child.
Beyoncé has had seven Number One Hits, 19 Top 10 Hits, and a total of 65 songs on the Billboard Hot 100. In contrast, Lady Gaga has had five Number One Hits, 17 Top 10 Hits, and a total of 34 songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
They both also shared a song that ranked in the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, which was the song ‘Telephone’ from Lady Gaga’s 2009 album The Fame Monster.
Looking at their album performance on the Billboard 200, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga are tied. Both of them have six albums to hit the number one spot on the Billboard 200 and both have 9 albums in the Top 10.
In our opinion, this information was still not enough to choose a clear winner. So we decided to compare them in the Decade-End Chart for the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200.
The clear winner in this comparison is Lady Gaga. On the 2010s Decade-end Billboard 200 Chart her album The Fame sat at number 31, her work with Bradley Cooper on the A Star Is Born soundtrack sat at 33, Born This Way was at 138, and The Fame Monster took spot 152.
As for the 2010s Decade-end Billboard Hot 100 Chart, her song ‘Bad Romance’ sat at spot 84.
On these charts, Beyoncé was only able to secure a spot on the 2010s Decade-end Billboard 200 Chart. Her album Beyoncé sat at number 65, Lemonade at 76, and 4 at number 123.
Based on chart performance the tally is Lady Gaga 3 popularity points and Beyoncé at 2 popularity points.
You can watch Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s music video for their 2008 song ‘Telephone’ below.
Comparing Album Sales
Another great way to compare artists’ popularity is to look at their album sales. Fortunately, both Beyoncé and Lady Gaga have six solo albums, so how do they compare?
Well depending on the source you’re looking at you get different answers.
Due to the high standards of their sources for ranking, we’ve decided to base our decision on the Wikipedia page List of Best Selling Music Artists. You can view the page here.
According to this page, Lady Gaga once again comes out above Beyoncé. She has a total of 149.7 million certified units sold worldwide and a claimed 124 million unit sales.
Beyoncé falls just shy of the ‘Pokerface’ singer with 99.6 million certified units sold worldwide and 118 million in claimed sales.
So now our popularity tally sits at Lady Gaga with 4 points and Beyoncé at 2.
Lady Gaga vs. Beyoncé: Award Wins
When it comes to popularity, there isn’t any better way to judge who is more popular than by the awards they have won. Overall, Queen Bey wins out on this front with over 800 nominations and 431 wins.
Lady Gaga has been nominated for over 750 awards and won 332 of them. However, in terms of the People’s Choice Awards, aka the ultimate popularity contest, Lady Gaga has more wins.
Beyoncé has been nominated for 28 People’s Choice Awards and won two, while Lady Gaga had been nominated for 23 and won three. In that case, we’ll give them both a point.
Our final popularity contest results put Lady Gaga at 5 points and Beyoncé at 4 points.