![]() ![]() ![]() But only a couple do, and you can probably tell which they are as you read. ![]() You'd think most of these artists would appear in the top 10 richest musicians in the world list, too. ![]() The bottom line is that every singer listed would be in most listener's lists, give or take a couple here and there. But splashed in here are my personal picks, and I expect to hear two types of complaints: "that person shouldn't be in there" and "where's my favorite singer in the list?" Given enough time you'd come up with at least 50 names because so much of it comes down to taste and preference.įortunately, because so many of us have voiced our opinions we can tell which vocalists have the most mass appeal, which should be taken into account. A panel of 179 experts ranked the vocalists.You want to be sure to start an argument with passionate musicians? Ask them who belongs in the top 10 best singers of all time list. This is an excerpt from Jonathan Lethem’s introduction to the Greatest Singers of All Time feature in the Novemissue of Rolling Stone. Falling in love with a singer is like being a teenager every time it happens. It’s as if they’ve fooled us into loving them, diddled our hard-wiring, located a vulnerability we thought we’d long ago armored over. If one of the weird things about singers is the ecstasy of surrender they inspire, another weird thing is the debunking response a singer can arouse once we’ve recovered our senses. The beauty of the singer’s voice touches us in a place that’s as personal as the place from which that voice has issued. Those two folks, a handful of others: their soul-burps are, for me, the soul-burps of the gods. Conversely, nothing in the vocal limitations of a Lou Reed guarantees a “Pale Blue Eyes” every time out, any more than singing as crazy-clumsy as Tom Waits guarantees a “Downtown Train.” Yet there’s a certain time-tested sturdiness to the lowchops approach forged by touchstone figures like Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison and Jonathan Richman, one that helps define rock & roll singing.įor me, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, just to mention two, are superb singers by any measure I could ever care about - expressivity, surprise, soul, grain, interpretive wit, angle of vision. How helplessly candid! How appalling!Ĭontrary to anything you’ve heard, the ability to actually carry a tune is in no regard a disability in becoming a rock & roll singer, only a mild disadvantage. Summoned through belly, hammered into form by the throat, given propulsion by bellows of lungs, teased into final form by tongue and lips, a vocal is a kind of audible kiss, a blurted confession, a soul-burp you really can’t keep from issuing as you make your way through the material world. There’s something a bout a voice that’s personal, not unlike the particular odor or shape of a given human body. ![]()
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