Back in 2010, Rolling Stone magazine published its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time list and I was enthralled. Being a more obsessive than average music fan and reckless bar karaoke enthusiast, the notion of prominent musicians and recording industry luminaries getting together to rank the vocal prowess of my singing idols was tantalizing.

Where other male peers in my teenage years were obsessing over pro and college sports statistics, I could always be counted on to know what musical artist had what number one single in what year, or which group had the most critically-acclaimed albums in their discography (the Beatles still top the Stones in my estimation, if only for the Fabs’ feat of having made their mark in the span of a mere six years).

What struck me most about Rolling Stones’ list was how the racial composition of their top 20 (and especially top 10 singers) contrasted so starkly with most of their other all-time-greatest list themes involving albums and singles. Whereas white artists dominated the top 10 of the album list (with Marvin Gaye being the sole, non-top-5 inclusion) the singers list top 10 was comprised almost entirely of black artists. Western popular music being so indebted to African-American musical art forms, this is somewhat understandable. And speaking of African-American musical art forms, it should go without saying that this list contains no rap artists.

10. James Brown

James Brown held many honorary titles ( “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business”, “Soul Brother Number One”) but he will undoubtedly be most remembered as the “Godfather of Soul”. That none of his many performing talents seemed to be overshadowed by his singing ability should in no way be taken to mean his singing was substandard. It was not. In the introduction to their list, Rolling Stone writer Jonathan Lethem emphasized:

“Contrary to anything you’ve heard, the ability to actually carry a tune is in no regard a disability in becoming a rock & roll singer…”

But this is in no way meant to imply that James Brown couldn’t carry a tune either. A soulful if unpolished balladeer, Brown was nonetheless most renowned for the guttural vocal ad-libs and soul-wrenching squeals employed on his super-tight band’s funk workouts: “Cold Sweat“, “I Got the Feelin'”, and all three parts of “Super Bad” among a stellar batch of others. Like all great singers, he let the music play him. His singing and dancing were the purest expression of his soul being simultaneously thrashed and soothed by it.

9. Stevie Wonder

The marvel that is the voice of Stevland Hardaway Morris (aka Little Stevie Wonder, aka Stevie Wonder) is unparalleled in the history of popular music. As eminently capable of caressing the most pristine, sophisticated melodies (“You and I”, “Isn’t She Lovely”) as it is of attacking the fiercest of funk and r&b (“Superstition”, “Higher Ground”, “I Wish”), it’s one of the main reasons he was able — even though it was more a showcase of his prodigious instrumentality than his singing chops — to achieve his first number one at the age of 13 with the live single “Fingertips” (on which Marvin Gaye played drums).

In addition to his own formidable music, Stevie has lent his fire and focus as a singer to everyone from collaborators such as Paul McCartney on “What’s That You’re Doing” to Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick on the charity hit single “That’s What Friends Are For”. Always spirited and uplifting in his delivery, his special rendition of “Ribbon In The Sky” at the televised funeral of Whitney Houston in 2012 gave the late diva a classy sendoff.

8. Otis Redding

Tragically perishing at 26 just as his commercial crossover breakthrough to the Beatles-and-Motown-dominated pop market seemed imminent, Otis Redding left behind an indelible musical legacy. As a singer he summoned raw gospel and blues to serve the expressive heartbreak of songs like “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and “These Arms of Mine” and to drive home the urgency of  tunes like “Mr. Pitiful” and “Tramp”.  

After driving someone else to an ultimately unproductive Stax studio session, Redding himself ended up being signed by studio chief Jim Stewart upon hearing Redding’s performance of “These Arms of Mine”. Recalled Stewart,  “Everybody was fixin’ to go home, but Joe Galkin (an Atlantic Records representative) insisted we give Otis a listen. There was something different about [the ballad]. He really poured his soul into it.”

His final masterpiece “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” came as a result of Redding being inspired by the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and trying create a similar sound (against the wishes of his label). While the music (co-written with Steve Cropper) was somewhat of a departure from the more traditional R&B of Redding’s prior work, his singing retained its gracefully pained and gritty resonance and carried the song’s emotional heart. The whistling at the end, meant to be redone with lyrics upon Redding’s return from a tour he wouldn’t survive, was itself a final taste of his gentle genius.

7. Bob Dylan

While some may find his tone and phrasing homely and be surprised to find Bob Dylan ranking so high on a list of greatest singers, there can be no question as to the breadth of his influence. Before Dylan, almost all popular recorded singing was expected to adhere to a certain set of rules. Singers strove to sound elegant and smooth. But Dylan emerged from the folk music scene, schooled on the vocal stylings of singers like Woody Guthrie and crackling vinyl blues apparitions like Robert Johnson howling like weary dogs in the lonely rural night. As Bono puts it in the Rolling Stone article:

“Almost no one sings like Elvis Presley anymore. Hundreds try to sing like Dylan. When Sam Cooke played Dylan for the young Bobby Womack, Womack said he didn’t understand it. Cooke explained that from now on, it’s not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It’s going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.”

Meaning what you sing means a lot. In “Visions Of Johanna” Dylan means to sound haunted, and he does. In “Positively 4th Street” Dylan means to sound stinging, and he stings. In “All Along The Watchtower” he borrows and embodies the tone of cryptic Biblical revelation, inspiring an even greater storm from artistic admirer (and singing disciple) Jimi Hendrix in his electrified hijacking of the song.

Perhaps now, in the age of Auto-tuned singing, we’ve again reached a point where vocal perfection is disproportionately prized over vocal character. Surely the two virtues need not be mutually exclusive — they can and have co-existed in voices from Whitney Houston to Jeff Buckley. But what Dylan demonstrated — what he reminded with his wry whine and inimitable phrasing — was that beauty is often uncommon, unfussy, and unexpected, and he did it as much with his lyrics as with the way he sang and still sings them.

6. Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye was not Nat King Cole. And yet, early on in his career, it appears he wanted to be. His debut 1961 album The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye featured his versions of jazz standards like Rodger and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine” and Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale”. He said he wanted to “sit on a stool and croon” rather than “shake my ass onstage”, believing that his voice should be the focus of his performances.

As things turned out, Gaye never became famous for his dancing, and his voice indeed was the thing that mattered most, but his tasteful jazz crooner aspirations were not to be, and his attempts to duplicate the successful jazz/adult contemporary ventures of artists like Ray Charles fizzled. Marvin Gaye’s destiny was loftier than becoming a Nat King Cole-imitator. Marvin Gaye’s destiny was to inspire future legions of Marvin Gaye- imitators.

This is not to say Gaye didn’t take any of his refined jazz sensibilities with him when he reluctantly surrendered to his genius as an R&B singer. Few before and even fewer since had his sense of controlled ache, where emotion pushed up against the lid of a boiling pot. He always sounded like he was barely holding something overwhelming down deep inside of him, and it’s unlikely that was an impression he would or could easily fake. He let bursts of carnal steam out at regular intervals to relieve some pressure, but any outright explosive loss of control usually didn’t come until the climax, as they did gloriously on tracks like “Distant Lover” and the still-astonishingly-scorching-after-45-years “Let’s Get It On“.

While he enjoyed moderate chart success in the 60’s, it was when Marvin Gaye’s expressions on record at Motown were allowed to become personal that his singing truly transcended R&B conventions. “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (a 7-week number one in 1968) may have solidified his pop stardom, but it was when he demanded and won the freedom to sing on matters beyond the traditionally-limited Motown scope that he became a vocal impressionist painter. “What’s Going On“, both the single and the 1971 album it helmed, fully unleashed Gaye’s passion and compassion on the world in a way that has yet to cease echoing in pop (and especially African-American) culture.

5. John Lennon

There are several reasons the Beatles became the most successful pop music act of all time, but let’s be clear up front that whether or not John Lennon‘s singing was one of them shouldn’t be up for debate. He’d probably have been one of the last people to agree however, as it is reputed he disliked the sound of his own voice and was constantly imploring producer George Martin to perform auditory cosmetic surgery on it. 

But regardless of the fact that Lennon’s singing on timeless tracks like “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” was filtered through electronic prisms, the human essence of his voice was never obscured. Slightly nasal but tunefully expressive, it married perfectly with Paul McCartney’s more rounded and sweet vocals on those occasions where one of their compositions called for them to sing together. 

What really put Lennon’s voice over the top though (and over McCartney’s, who ranked at 11 on this particular list) was its peculiar combination of violence and vulnerable innocence. He could rage until his throat was raw, as he did on early tracks like the Motown cover “Money (That’s What I Want)” and later, to unhinged extremes, on post-Beatles solo tracks like “Well Well Well”; but could sound as guileless as a cooing child on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” or the impossibly sad and lovely lament for his dead mother  “Julia”.

McCartney, too, could rage hard (“I’m Down”, “Helter Skelter”) and soothe soft (“Yesterday”, “Blackbird”, “I Will”) but the deliberate distance he more often put between himself and the songs he wrote and sang contrasted sharply with Lennon’s tendency to bare his soul. “Dear Prudence” is a personal plea to a real person informed by a genuine yearning. “Martha My Dear” is about McCartney’s sheepdog.

It’s been said that “Imagine” (arguably Lennon’s most famous composition) hasn’t been covered by other artists as much as McCartney’s “Yesterday” for the sheer fact that Lennon’s own spiritual DNA is so entwined with the former song, and I think that applies to most of his songs — beginning with “Strawberry Fields Forever”, continuing  through “Instant Karma”, all the way to the painfully bitter end at the time of his murder with “Beautiful Boy” and “Watching The Wheels”.

There will never be another John Lennon, so it’s a gift to the world that John Lennon was so stubbornly and honestly John Lennon while we had him.

4. Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke started out as a gospel star, becoming the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers in 1950, although the group had been around in various member incarnations since five years before Cooke‘s 1931 birth. His debonair style and looks may have contributed as much as his voice to his ascension to the top of the gospel heap (and subsequent success in the secular pop market) but it’s hard to imagine any man in possession of his supernaturally soulful pipes not seducing the ears of the world whatever his personal appearance.

Cooke sang with an enchanting agility. He wrapped his voice around the words and phrases which made up his smart lyrics with a palpable joy whose luminescence in the gospel praising of “Jesus Gave Me Water” went undiminished in secular classics like “You Send Me” and “Wonderful World”. And he had range beyond his impressive vocal one, unafraid to sing and put his magic stamp on anything from folk standard “If I Had A Hammer” to the 1927 musical number “The Best Things in Life Are Free” on the Live at the Copa  album.

Cut short in his prime just like a dishearteningly amount of others on this list (Redding, Gaye, Lennon), Cooke still managed, also like those others, to forge a mighty musical legacy which reached a triumphant crescendo with the posthumously-released “A Change Is Gonna Come” — a song that managed to both fulfill his ambition to write something as socially-conscious as Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” and to serve as a final testament to his ability to make the secular sacred and the sacred secular.

3. Elvis Presley

Early in this list I quoted U2‘s Bono saying that almost no one tries to sing like Elvis anymore. What he didn’t bother to point out is that almost no one can or ever could. Brought up in a Depression-era Deep South steeped in decades of blues and gospel, Elvis Aaron Presley would come to symbolize the breaching of racial cultural barriers years before the political manifestation of racial desegregation in America finally came to pass.

Sun Records founder Sam Phillips was famously in search of a white face to put on the infectious power of R&B (or “race music” as music by black performers was labelled by the white establishment back then). Unlike flavorless posers like Pat Boone though, Elvis Presley arrived at his studio with a genuine feel and affection for blues and gospel music. If the way he sang made many listeners — both black and white — who first heard him on record assume he was a Negro, the way he involuntary shifted his hips and scandalized white America in his earliest television performances left little doubt he was rooted in the music.

Like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, Presley had an affinity for the sophisticated crooning of Dean Martin and Nat King Cole as well as the down-home, folksy stuff, and he demonstrated this versatility on hits as varied as “Jailhouse Rock”, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, “It’s Now or Never”, and “Return to Sender”. He could do ballads as well as Sinatra or rival the wild, gritty spunk of Little Richard. Also like Cooke and Gaye he was blessed with natural good looks that only served to widen his cultural reach just as television was coming into more postwar homes and just as pop stars were branching off into cinema. 

Still, after his looks and health went to shit and he died a sad and lonely death on his palace throne toilet, the King left behind a voice which had slayed millions of hearts and sparked a global cultural revolution, and which still lives on for as long as people appreciate great singing, whether they attempt to emulate its magnificence or not.

2. Ray Charles

“I Got a Woman“, released in 1954, is one of the earliest popular examples of what came widely to be known as the genre of soul music — predating other early contenders like James Brown’s “Please Please Please” in 1956 and Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” in 1962.  Ray Charles wrote the song with his band’s trumpeter, Renald Richard, and built it along a gospel-frenetic pace with secular lyrics and a jazz-inspired rhythm and blues. In other words, soul.

Throwing gasoline on that potent fire was Charles‘ voice itself; a gruff and bluesy thing that sounded ancient and fresh all at once. It was ancient as the field hollers of his slave ancestors and fresh as the catalyst that would weave  disparate African threads of blues, R&B, gospel, and jazz to help birth rock and roll, soul music, and all that those genres would give birth to in turn. 

Does it mean anything that out of a list of the 100 greatest singers of all time, the only two blind artists made the top 10? If we accept the idea that being deprived of sight puts one in deeper touch with their sense of acoustics then it’s more than mere coincidence. Ray Charles for his part sang to defy a literal darkness the way many enveloped in darkness of some kind have sung the blues to cope. He sang “Georgia On My Mind” with a tenderness that soaks through and leaves any listener with a heart feeling his feelings whether they know anything about Georgia or not. Because it’s the feeling in his singing that conquered you, no matter what he was singing about. 

1  Aretha Franklin

By this point some of you may have been asking, “Cool picks, but where are the females on this list?” Rest assured, women are well represented on the top 100 list as a whole, but any objections to their being nearly absent from the top 10 should at least partially be atoned for by the Queen of Soul‘s position at the pinnacle. That’s right, according to all the artists and industry execs, technicians, etc. who voted on this list, no man, woman, child, or beast made a more exquisite sound than the recently laid to rest Aretha Franklin.

Dropping like a bomb in the cultural riot that was late-1960s America, Franklin‘s immortal cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” bulldozed its way to the top of the charts and made her a musical force to be reckoned with. Like a majority of the other artists in the top 10 (and a great deal in the entire top 100) the force of nature that was her voice was schooled in a church gospel choir. She was a master of conveying and provoking strong emotional reactions whether she was soaring or singing gently and directly.

Her handling of  Carole King‘s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” was pop drama packaged in a power seldom heard before or since — her legions of diva imitators sometimes come close to replicating her force and range, but her measured instinct for restraint and control escapes the vast majority of them.

Such an unparalleled force of nature was her voice that its gifts even extended to opera. On the night of the 40th Grammy Awards in 1998 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, the late opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti had been scheduled to perform the aria “Nessun Dorma,” from Puccini’s “Turandot” but had to cancel due to illness 30 minutes into the live broadcast. Franklin, booked to appear in a Blues Brothers-themed number that same evening, agreed to step in for him and absolutely slayed it. She could sing anything.

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