Person : Elon Musk, Athlete : Simone Biles, Entertainer : Olivia Rodrigo

TIME Person of the Year 2021: Elon Musk

TIME Athlete of the Year 2021: Simone Biles
TIME Person of the Year 2021: Elon Musk
TIME Heroes of the Year 2021: Vaccine Developers
TIME Entertainer of the Year 2021: Olivia Rodrigo

Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Elon Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too. In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society.

Billionaire Elon Musk named Time’s Person of the Year for 2021

The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune.

He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable. Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops.

This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars.

His startup rocket company, SpaceX, has leapfrogged Boeing and others to own America’s spacefaring future. His car company, Tesla, controls two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle market it pioneered and is valued at a cool $1 trillion. That has made Musk, with a net worth of more than $250 billion, the richest private citizen in history, at least on paper. He’s a player in robots and solar, cryptocurrency and climate, brain-computer implants to stave off the menace of artificial intelligence and underground tunnels to move people and freight at super speeds.

TIME Person of the Year 2021: Elon Musk

TIME Athlete of the Year 2021: Simone Biles
TIME Heroes of the Year 2021: Vaccine Developers
TIME Entertainer of the Year 2021: Olivia Rodrigohttps://t.co/oVQ81OxuEO #ElonMusk @TIME @elonmusk https://t.co/bJxMYT9WYX
— VIRLAN (@virlanco) December 13, 2021

Simone Biles Named Time’s Athlete Of The Year After Tough 2021

TIME Athlete of the Year 2021: Simone Biles

The 7-time medalist was praised for the strength she showed outside of competition.

Simone Biles can add another impressive accolade to her trophy room: she’s just been named Time’s 2021 Athlete of the Year.

This honor may have actually come as a shock because Biles, who already has four Olympic gold medals — among seven total medals — and four gymnastics skills named after her, made global news during the Tokyo Olympics this summer when she pulled out during the event after struggling with a mental issue referred to by gymnasts as “the twisties.”

Biles later explained that the pandemic and the pressure to perform put too much strain on her mental health, and that “[her] mind was racing and [she] wasn’t going to sleep as easily” and that too much time alone due to early pandemic protocols increased her anxiety and self-doubt. She added, “things you normally don’t think about because you don’t have time, now you have hours on end to think about — those doubts, those worries and those problems.”

Time Magazine Names Olivia Rodrigo Entertainer Of The Year

Time has named Olivia Rodrigo as its Entertainer of the Year for 2021 just ahead of the magazine’s annual Person Of The Year reveal.

TIME Entertainer of the Year 2021: Olivia Rodrigo

Oliva Rodrigo, 18, has rose to success through acting and music. She is known for her roles as Paige Olvera on the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark and Nini Salazar-Roberts on the Disney+ mockumentary series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

In January 2021 she became the youngest solo artist ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her song “Drivers License” was a mainstay on the charts for eight weeks straight.