200 Best Singers of All Time - Rolling Stone

Aretha Franklin described her ngo arsenic a vocalist similar this: “Me with my hand outstretched, hoping idiosyncratic volition instrumentality it.” That benignant of deep, empathetic enslaved betwixt creator and listener is the astir elemental transportation successful music. And you tin deliberation of our database of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time arsenic a solemnisation of that bond. These are the vocalists that person shaped past and defined our lives — from creaseless operators to earthy shouters, from gospel to punk, from Sinatra to Selena to SZA.

When Rolling Stone archetypal published its database of the 100 Greatest Singers successful 2008, we utilized an elaborate voting process that included input from well-known musicians. The results skewed toward classical stone and singers from the Sixties and Seventies. This caller database was compiled our unit and cardinal contributors, and it encompasses 100 years of popular euphony arsenic an ongoing planetary conversation, wherever iconic Indian playback vocalist Lata Mangeshkar lands betwixt Amy Winehouse and Johnny Cash, and salsa queen Celia Cruz is up determination successful the rankings with Prince and Marvin Gaye. You mightiness announcement that, say, determination isn’t immoderate opera connected our database — that’s due to the fact that our purview is popular euphony writ large, meaning that astir each the artists connected this database had important careers arsenic crossover stars making fashionable euphony for the masses.

Before you commencement scrolling (and commenting), support successful caput that this is the Greatest Singers list, not the Greatest Voices List. Talent is impressive; genius is transcendent. Sure, galore of the radical present were calved with monolithic pipes, cleanable pitch, and boundless range. Others person rougher, stranger, oregon much delicate instruments. As our write-up for the antheral who ended up astatine Number 112 notes, “Ozzy Osbourne doesn’t person what astir radical would telephone a bully voice, but lad does helium person a large one.” That could use to much than a fewer radical here. 

In each cases, what mattered astir to america was originality, influence, the extent of an artist’s catalog, and the breadth of their philharmonic legacy. A dependable tin beryllium gorgeous similar Mariah Carey’s, rugged similar Toots Hibbert’s, understated similar Willie Nelson’s, slippery and sumptuous similar D’Angelo’s, oregon bracing similar Bob Dylan’s. But successful the end, the singers down it are present for 1 reason: They tin remake the satellite conscionable by opening their mouths.

Contributors: Jonathan Bernstein, David Browne, David Cantwell, Mankaprr Conteh, Jon Dolan, Brenna Ehrlich, Michael Goldwasser, Andy Greene, Joe Gross, Kory Grow, Will Hermes, Maura Johnston, Michelle Hyun Kim, Kristine Kwak, Ernesto Lechner, Julyssa Lopez, Angie Martoccio, Michaelangelo Matos, Tomás Mier, Jason Newman, Mosi Reeves, Noah Shachtman, Rob Sheffield, Hank Shteamer, Brittany Spanos, Lisa Tozzi, Simon Vozick-Levinson

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