Kurt Cobain at 45?? That has to be a typo. He should be no higher than 45,000.
Top 100 singers of all time Rolling Stone magazine
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There’s something a bout a voice that’s personal, not unlike the particular odor or shape of a given human body. 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. How helplessly candid! How appalling!
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, only a mild disadvantage. 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.
For 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. Those two folks, a handful of others: their soul-burps are, for me, the soul-burps of the gods. 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. 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. 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. Falling in love with a singer is like being a teenager every time it happens.
This is an excerpt from Jonathan Lethem’s introduction to the Greatest Singers of All Time feature in the November 27, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone. A panel of 179 experts ranked the vocalists.
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, only a mild disadvantage. 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.
For 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. Those two folks, a handful of others: their soul-burps are, for me, the soul-burps of the gods. 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. 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. 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. Falling in love with a singer is like being a teenager every time it happens.
This is an excerpt from Jonathan Lethem’s introduction to the Greatest Singers of All Time feature in the November 27, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone. A panel of 179 experts ranked the vocalists.
A better singer than Bob Dylan.
These lists always have Bonnie Raitt. I've met one person in my life that listened to Bonnie Raitt. And that person went insane.
I think that guy makes these list.
That is well said. Of course many of the ones on the RS Top 100 list are not great or even good singers, they are only famous because of the rock and pop tunes they sang, not because of their innate ability. You can go to Broadway any night of the week and hear nearly everyone on stage sing in a trained classical sense many times better than the list in Rolling Stone, but it is the style that counts in the RS list of 100 best singers.
She remade Roy Orbison’s song “You got it”. Did not see one molecule of value added.
To not have Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson in the top 5-10 is egregious.
Looking closer at the list. Bjork? Dolores O'Riordan infinitely better than her if they felt the need for an alternative female. Stevie Nicks in the 90's is criminal. Chris Cornell, Layne Stanley and Eddie Vedder all better vocally than Kurt Cobain. Cornell especially. Just a ****** list.
No Waylon Jennings, Bob Seger is ********. Merle Haggard should be higher up as well as John Fogerty.
But you can't get the sound from a story in a magazine
Aimed at your average teen
Another glaring omission.
He was a good shot though, even if he was about 5 years late pulling the trigger.
Burton Cummings is not on that list.
