MartianTV's The Artist of the Year for 2012 Is...

Yes, Rihanna. I know. I'm shocked too.

Say what you want about Rihanna. We always do. Perhaps that's why I resisted making this happen for almost a month! Said amount of time later and here I am; Setting my ego aside and writing a post about why Rihanna ruled in 2012.

Originally we tossed around a few other names. Rihanna wasn't even a question. Fortunately, Taylor Swift's local impact can barely touch Rihanna's world wide domination. P!nk is still heavily underrated by mainstream media, which is reflected in her social popularity. Justin Bieber is still the most overrated artist in the entire world. And Kitti wasn't allowed to vote because he always votes for Britney. In the end, the writers of the blog all came to the conclusion that we needed to stop trying to ignore Rihanna and her impact. She's here to stay. She's not just a singles artist. She is more than her image. People are genuinely infatuated with the woman and you'd have to be an idiot to say you don't understand why. She (or at the very least, her label) are very much in tune with what people want to hear and they abuse the living shit out of that power to help Rihanna launch hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after...

I'm the the comment section of this post will be filled with hate-vomit, but hold your sharp, shade-throwing tongues. I've prepared some facts from the past year that you'll have to agree are rather impressive.

• Billboard's #1 Pop Songs Artist in the past 2 decades. (1992-2002)
• Named UK's  2nd Biggest Single-Selling Female Artist of All Time.
• Finally (after 6 failed attempts) nabbed a #1 album in the US. 
• Listed as Billboard's artist with the 5th more #1 singles (tying Madonna).
• Earned her 12th #1 single in the US.
• Won a People's Choice Award, a Grammy, 7 assorted MTV Awards, 6 ASCAP Awards, 2 Brit Awards, as well as a long list off less relevant music awards.
• Entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the best selling digital artist of all time.
• Became the most popular social celebrity according to FORBES.
• Landed under YouTube's crown for the most popular female artist.
• Tons of other shit that I'm sure I don't know about because I'm not a huge fan.

Rihanna was also this blog's most discussed celebrity. She brought our blog the most Google-based traffic (meaning you bitches searched for Rihanna and ended up here). "Diamonds" landed at #3 on our Top 100 songs of 2012.  Unapologetic landed at #30 on our Top 35 albums of 2012. If anything, these stats alone is what helped her gain my attention. When reflecting our year-end traffic, 4 of our Top 10 most popular post were about Rihanna. 

For those reasons, we honor her as our Artist of the Year for 2012. 

Congratulations, Rihanna. 

Stay tuned for the Best New Artist of 2012 announcement. You guys voted in our Frank Ocean vs. Lana Del Rey a lot. I mean, we had 83,000 votes in the end... though I have no idea if they were all from different people.