The 25 Best Stand-Up Comedians of the 21st Century So Far
No matter how quick the wit, no stand-up comic starts out a success. Forget the top: on the way to the bottom rung, comics need to endure endless open-mic tryouts, log thousands of miles for little or no money and be thankful for 1:00 a.m. slots in front of drunken hecklers. And that’s just for starters. The further up the ladder they climb, the more pressure they face to consistently write and hone hour-plus sets that will power tours, specials and social media. Increasingly, they also choose to engage in a weekly form of digital improv known as the podcast.
As the first quarter of the 21st century comes to an end, Billboard set out to determine the best of that A-list: the top 25 stand-up comics of the last 25 years. To come up with these rankings, we polled experts that work with comics on a daily basis: bookers with a long histories of breaking comic talent.
The panel consists of William Burdett-Coutts, who heads the Assembly venues at the Edinburgh Fringe festival; Michael Cox, stand-up booker for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; Adam Eget, manager at Joe Rogan’s Comedy Mothership in Austin, Tx, and before that, the Comedy Store in Los Angeles; Bruce Hills, who, for 36 years booked and eventually ran Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival; Caroline Hirsch, the founder of Caroline’s Comedy Club and co-founder of the New York Comedy Festival; Chris and Steve Mazzilli, owners of the Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan; Patrick Milligan, the booker and proprietor of The Stand NYC comedy club; Susan Provan, director of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival; and Samantha Schles, director of comedy at the SXSW Festival. (Billboard‘s parent company, PMC, owns a 50% stake in SXSW.)
Thanks to all our panelists for taking time out of their hectic schedules to participate. (And special thanks to Hill, who provided valuable advice on voting parameters, helped create a well-rounded and authoritative judges panel and generously provided means to contact them.)
The process began with our panel helping put together a ballot of more than 150 nominees. The talent pool was limited to comedians with active stand-up careers over the last 25 years — as opposed to sketch, sitcom, film or improvisational performers, such as the cast of Saturday Night Live, Second City or Upright Citizens Brigade. Overseas comedians with a presence in the United States were also considered.
From there, the judges each ranked their top 25 comics. Voting was anonymous, and a weighted system was used to determine the top 25. As a number of judges remarked when returning their ballots, winnowing such a large batch of nominees was extremely difficult. There are a lot of exceptional stand-up comics out there.
For the next week, Billboard will present the results of the voting — the top 25 stand-up comedians of the last 25 years — in ascending order, five at a time, with the complete list unveiled on Friday (Dec. 6).
Nos. 25 through 21 follow below.
Powered by Billboard.