Who are the rising new generation of female singers rising up to lead the pop world? Read on for the full list.
Carole King, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Cyndy Lauper, Alanis Morisette, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift — at the height of their careers, these female singers were considered top of their game in the pop genre. And while their influence remains palpable in world music today, with Taylor Swift having built a transcendent career that continues to flourish long after the culmination of the Eras tour, these 10 female singers are now leading the charge in ushering in a new era of pop music.
Celebrity is a game of Russian roulette in our modern age. To wit: many a new starlet has emerged from the quagmire of obscurity, garnering adulation through virality in our era of social media fame. Numerous singers have found overnight fame in this way, climbing the ladder to success on the backs of user-sharing content apps like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Yet, the sad fact remains that many also find themselves descending back into oblivion once the initial wave of excitement has died down.
Tenacity and determination are crucial to sustained stardom; indeed, these traits are what set fair-weather clout-chasers apart from those whose hard work has culminated in the success of their art. Some top names in today’s global music scene are masters of finding, growing, and maintaining success — chief among them, billionaire musician Taylor Swift, whose influence on pop culture over the years has been extraordinary and groundbreaking to say the least.
View this post on Instagram
While Swift’s hold on the world of music has yet to wane, a new generation of female pop singers have risen up to lead the charge to tomorrow, each building upon their early success to cement their places in the world. Notably, these 10 female pop singers are proving they have the Moxy to take their fifteen minutes of fame and transform it into concrete careers that can withstand the test of time.
10 female singers who are leading the new generation of pop girls
Sabrina Carpenter
View this post on Instagram
An icon leveraging coquettish charm, songwriting talent, and strategic collaborations ranging from Taylor Swift to Dolly Parton alike, Sabrina Carpenter has had a rollercoaster career across television and music alike. The 25-year-old singer, whose career began when she started posting musical covers to YouTube aged 11, had her first taste of fame on Disney’s Girl Meets World. In 2014, she released her debut single and EP, both titled Can’t Blame A Girl For Trying before releasing her first studio album Eyes Wide Open in 2015. As per Billboard, the album sold over 12,000 copies in its first week, later winning two Radio Disney Music Awards.
By 2021, Carpenter had signed on to Island Records, a label owned by Universal Music Group. Her first single with the label “Skin” followed soon after, peaking at No. 48 and No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard Global 200, marking her first entry on both charts. One year later in 2022, she released her fifth studio album, Emails I Can’t Send. The album debuted and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, with “Nonsense”, the album’s fifth song, going viral on TikTok, garnering a Platinum certification by the RIAA.
View this post on Instagram
Today, Carpenter has two Grammy awards, six studio albums, and multiple credits to her name including opening for Ariana Grande, The Vamps, and Taylor Swift. She has also headlined five tours, of which the most recent is the Short n’ Sweet tour which takes its name from her newest album of the same name. Carpenter has 72,596,529 monthly listeners on Spotify, with her top songs including “Espresso” (1,980,592,769 streams) and “Please Please Please” (1,272,862,931 streams). For these reasons and more, Carpenter is widely regarded as one of the best new female pop singers today.
Most recently, the singer engaged in iconic behaviour when she re-recorded her smash hit “Please Please Please” with Dolly Parton, seemingly taking shots at ex-boyfriend Barry Keoghan who had appeared in the song’s original music video while the two were still dating in 2014.
Tate McRae
View this post on Instagram
21-year-old Tate Rosner McRae has quickly become one of the best new female singers of the pop world following her whirlwind career in dance and music. She was born in Calgary Alberta in Canada, where she was also raised until the age of 4 when her family relocated to Oman for her father’s work. In Oman, she attended The American International School Muscat and began recreational dance training at the age of 6. The family would return to Calgary when she was 8, and it was then that McRae began a more intense training regime to expound on her dancing passions. From age 11 onwards, she expanded on her repertoire of dance styles, signing up for ballet training at the School of Alberta Ballet, which trains ballerinas for the Alberta Ballet Company. She graduated from Western Canada High School in 2022.
View this post on Instagram
McRae competed on So You Think You Can Dance in 2016 when she was just 13, becoming the first Canadian finalist on the reality show. In 2017, she released her debut song “One Day”, signing with RCA Records and following up with the release of two EPS: All the Things I Never Said in 2020 and Too Young to Be Sad in 2021, the latter of which took the top spot as Spotify’s most streamed female EP of 2021.
McRae’s debut studio album, I Used To Think I Could Fly, was released in 2022, peaking at No. 13 on the US Billboard 200. She followed up that release with her single, “Greedy” in 2023, after which she released her second studio album, Think Later. The album went on to debut in the top five in multiple countries, cementing McRae’s place in global pop. On February 21 2025, McRae released her third studio album, So Close To What, with her single “It’s OK I’m OK” debuting in the top 20 of the Hot 100. She currently has 45,252,510 monthly listeners on Spotify, with popular songs including “Greedy” with 1,659,132,744 streams and “You Broke Me First” with 1,660,022,242 streams.
Tyla
View this post on Instagram
Fresh out of high school at just 17 years of age, South African singer Tyla Laura Seethal kicked off her career in 2019 when she released her debut single “Getting Late”. Filmed by her manager during the next two pandemic-beleaguered years, the accompanying music video would not be released until 2021, the same year the Johannesburg-born songstress signed with Epic Records. Late in 2021, she released her debut single with Epic Records, “Overdue”, following it up with her second single “To Last” in November 2022.
Tyla eventually rose to prominence when her 2023 single “Water” made a splash on TikTok by spawning a viral dance challenge. The resultant attention catapulted Tyla into a whole new world of fame and fortune, with “Water” going on to peak in the top 10 in several countries including the United States, the UK, and South Africa. She went on to release her self-titled debut studio album Tyla in March 2023, a fully-fledged artist and one of the hottest new female pop singers in town.
Now 23 years old, Tyla is the youngest-ever African artist to win a Grammy. Notably, the singer won the Grammy award for Best African Music Performance for “Water” at the 2024 iteration of the revered musical award show. She has performed at Milan Fashion Week for Dolce & Gabbana, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and The Voice; additionally, can boast of having 27,967,431 monthly listeners on Spotify.
Chappell Roan
View this post on Instagram
Freshly minted Grammy award winner Chappell Roan rode the waves of both popularity and infamy in 2024, a year that witnessed her rise to prominence as well as her fall from grace. Born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz in Missouri, the 27-year-old singer’s journey to celebrity was not without its difficulties, and she experienced multiple failings on her way to the top.
Roan’s experience in the musical industry is nuanced, and her art is fuelled by her lived experiences as a queer person. And, as someone who has experienced difficulties at the hands of capitalism, Roan stands staunchly for mental health, boundaries, and the protection of artists. Sadly, this stance has gained her some notoriety among labels and pop culture pundits alike, but fans know she’s a real one.
As a performer, Roan is best known for her 2024 hit “Good Luck Babe”, which has garnered 1,309,233,090 plays on Spotify. Her other top hits include “Pink Pony Club”, “HOT TO GO!”, and “Casual”, all of which have contributed significantly to her 46,052,933 monthly listeners on Spotify. To date, she has embarked on two headlining tours, the Naked in North America tour and the Midwest Princess tour; additionally, she has also supported numerous stars on their tours, including Vance Joy, Olivia Rodrigo, Benn Platt, and Fletcher among others.
Charli XCX
View this post on Instagram
Yet another pop girl who rose to prominence on TikTok in 2024, Charli XCX kicked off Brat girl summer with a now-iconic shade of lime green, a flawless new album, and a devil-may-care level of spunk that has endeared her to many. Assuming her place as the Gen Z icon of the summer of 2024, the 32-year-old Cambridge native first began posting songs on Myspace as a precursor to entering the London rave scene. In 2010, she signed with Asylum Records, with which she released a series of singles and mixtapes.
View this post on Instagram
While a mainstay in the scene, the singer would truly come into her own in 2019, when she released her third studio album Charli with its hit single “1999”. Her fourth studio album How I’m Feeling Now, which was released in 2020 and produced during pandemic-era lockdowns, was a critical success; it was followed in 2022 by her fifth album, Crash, which went on to become her first No. 1 album in the United Kingdom and Australia. She further gained traction with “Speed Drive”, which was featured as part of the soundtrack for Greta Gerwig’s critically acclaimed Margot Robbie-starrer Barbie (2023). However, it wasn’t until her sixth studio album Brat was released in 2024 that Charli truly found commercial success.
Widely agreed upon as one of the best albums of 2024, Brat produced hit singles like “Apple”, “Guess”, and “Von Dutch”, all of which have contributed to her 32,096,452 monthly listeners on Spotify. At the 67th annual Grammy Awards, she took home three awards: Best Dance Pop Recording for “Von Dutch”, as well as Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Recording Package for Brat.
Olivia Rodrigo
View this post on Instagram
22-year-old Olivia Rodrigo has become a key player in the world of pop, and her music is widely circulated around TikTok, having formed the backbone of many a viral trend and video. Rodrigo made her debut into fame at just 12 years of age in 2015, when she landed a lead role in An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success. In 2016, she appeared in Disney’s Bizaardvark, where she portrayed guitarist Paige Olvera for three seasons. By the time February 2019 had rolled around, Rodrigo had clinched a starring role in Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, where she portrayed Nini Salazar-Roberts.
View this post on Instagram
Following her time at Disney, Rodrigo took a break from acting to pursue a career in music. She kicked off 2020 by signing with Geffen Records, taking inspiration from Taylor Swift to negotiate ownership of her masters. Her debut single “Drivers License” was released in January of 2021, debuting No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It also broke records on Spotify as the song with the most daily streams for a non-holiday song, first with 15.7 million streams on January 11 and 17 million streams on January 12. It was also the first song in history to achieve 80 million streams in 7 days. That April, Rodrigo released another single, “Deja Vu”, with her third single “Good 4 U” following on May 14. One week later, on May 21, Rodrigo released her debut studio album Sour, a move that cemented her place in Gen Z pop culture and music.
Rodrigo went on to win three Grammy awards in 2002: Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album for Sour, and Best Pop Solo Performance for “Drivers License”. She released her second studio album Guts in 2023; that same year, she performed “Can’t Catch Me Now” for The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes soundtrack. The song quickly caught fire and went on to snag her another Grammy nomination in 2024. As of 2025, Rodrigo has headlined two tours, and now has 47,671,347 monthly listeners on Spotify with top songs including “Drivers License” (2,417,739,117 streams), “Deja Vu” (1,850, 589,212 streams), and “Traitor” (1,830,048,246 streams).
Rachel Chinouriri
View this post on Instagram
While she was born and raised in London, British singer Rachel Chinouriri boasts Zimbabwean roots. Notably, her parents made the decision to relocate to the UK a short while before she was born, and the family lived in Croydon until she was three years old. Chinouriri became invested in British culture and music at a young age, and explored the discographies of both Lily Allen and Daughter while a teen. By the time she was 17, she had begun writing and recording songs on a GBP 20 microphone, uploading them to SoundCloud using her mother’s laptop.
In 2018, Chinouriri signed on with Parlophone. While the first of her EPs Mama’s Boy was released in 2019 with Marathon, she would go on to release two EPs, Better Off Without (2022) and Live at KOKO (2024), her debut mini-album Four° In Winter (2021), and her debut studio album What a Devastating Turn of Events in 2024 with Parlophone.
Now 26-years-old, Chinouriri strikes an impressive figure in world pop, having supported Sabrina Carpenter at her Short n’ Sweet tour. Her single “Give Me A Reason” received a nomination at the Ivor Novello Awards for Best Contemporary Song; she has also received celebrity endorsement, most notably, from British actress Sophie Turner, who posted “All I Ever Asked” in an Instagram story supposedly aimed at ex-husband Joe Jonas. As of 2025, Chinouriri has secured nominations for Artist of the Year and Best New Artist at the Brit Award; she has also garnered 2,885,672 monthly listeners on Spotify.