Why Billboard honors Lady Gaga as woman of the year

Billboard has announced the recipient of its 2015 woman of the year award.

Artist Lady Gaga will be honored with the prize, according to Billboard. Last year, the award went to singer Taylor Swift.

Gaga took to Twitter to express her thanks. 

Besides Ms. Swift, who has won the prize twice, other women selected for the award by Billboard include Reba McEntire, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, and Pink.

Gaga has had multiple hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the song “Poker Face” and “Just Dance,” both of which hit number one. She also recently won praise for her performance at the 2015 Oscars, in which she sang a medley of songs from the film “The Sound of Music” to celebrate the movie’s fiftieth anniversary. 

During her career so far, Gaga has explored various forms of entertainment and styles of music. Her most recent pop album was “Artpop,” which she released in 2013, but she changed things up slightly in 2014 when she released an album of standards, titled “Cheek to Cheek,” with singer Tony Bennett. The album hit number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and includes such songs as “Anything Goes,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” The album received mixed reviews but some critics praised Gaga’s vocal power on the album, with Guardian writer Caroline Sullivan writing that her voice has “considerable warmth and depth” and Boston Globe writer James Reed calling her “devastating… [she sings] rather beautifully.” 

Gaga has appeared on the small and big screens before, but she’ll be even more visible in an upcoming TV project. Gaga is starring on the new season of the FX drama “American Horror Story,” which debuts on Oct. 7. This starring role follows smaller turns in the films “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” and “Machete Kills.”

Why did Lady Gaga get this year's honor? Billboard reports:

Billboard's Woman of the Year has always represented the finest in music, and the anointing of a key influential figure who drove the conversation for that year. No one embodies that more than Lady Gaga in 2015," says Janice Min, co-president and chief creative officer of Guggenheim Media's entertainment group, which consists of Billboard and THR. "From her show-stopping performance at the Oscars, to her co-headlining tour, to her philanthropic outreach and foundation promoting youth wellbeing and empowerment, to her new role as TV star, there is no woman dominating popular culture tastes and its evolution as much as she is today. What a force."

The six-time Grammy-winning pop star and actress recently hit No. 1 on the real time Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 chart with her video "Till It Happens to You," a track written for the college sexual assault documentary "The Hunting Ground," which premiered at Sundance in January and will air on CNN later this year