The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time

“I used to be a breathy little soprano,” Joni Mitchell told us in 1969. “Then one day I found that I could sing low. At first, I thought I had lost my voice forever.” She didn’t, and she still hasn’t. Mitchell’s songwriting has long been revered — especially in recent years by younger generations — but her vocals are also unmatched, from the way she effortlessly climbs octaves to her mastering of both a high register and husky depth (listen to the incredible For The Roses gem “Lesson in Survival” for a taste of both). Despite years of smoking and health setbacks, she’s still reminding us of her greatness, whether it’s with surprise appearances or unearthed gems from the vault.–A.M.

Rod the Mod didn’t merely mimic his vocal hero Sam Cooke’s grainy earnestness; he reimagined it from the inside and grew into one of rock’s great interpreters. Stewart can break your heart while singing as a good-time rounder, can make you wince or smirk with equal facility — when he’s on, he can make ordinary material sound as good as a new suit. And when the material’s great, he’s irresistible. If all he’d ever made was 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story — a vocal tour de force, every emotion precisely evoked — he’d belong on this list. But he’s still learning new tricks, as the Songbook albums show off nicely. —M.M.

“My voice was always low,” Toni Braxton told The Guardian in 2020. “I remember everyone in class singing ‘Joy to the World,’ and I was the only one who couldn’t sing it in the key. I was always the kid in the room with the low voice that made you turn around.” The R&B singer’s voice still makes people do double takes, but not because of what it can’t do; instead, it’s because of her smooth tone and ability to make even the simplest sentiments smolder. Her blockbuster ballad “Un-Break My Heart” showcases the full extent of her vocal power, but songs like the pensive “Breathe Again” show how she can slow-burn emotion to devastating effect, her steely-eyed resolve only breaking when it’s clear that feelings are about to take her over. —M.J.

The queen of country rock never wanted to be a soprano pigeonholed in one genre, so she spent four decades following her curiosity instead of what her fans wanted — a move straight out of her friend Neil Young’s playbook. She quickly established herself as the greatest interpreter in music history, dipping her paintbrush in everything from opera to standards to the traditional Mexican music of her family, exposing boomers to songs they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. And with those legendary pipes that spanned several octaves, she could truly sing anything — who else could master both “Blue Bayou” and “Tú, Sólo Tú”? —A.M.

As a member of her family band the Staple Singers, Mavis Staples injected the power of gospel exclamation into the pop charts; just listen to her command on “I’ll Take You There.” On the records she’s made over the past two decades, Staples found her voice in more ways than one. Whether singing civil rights songs or working with sympathetic collaborators like Jeff Tweedy, she found the perfect frameworks for her instrument. But she also proved that voices can age in remarkable and expressive ways. Reflecting a life that’s had its shares of highs (joining the Band at The Last Waltz) and lows (the loss of her father and sisters), Staples imbues everything she signs with experience, warmth, wisdom, and acceptance. —D.B. 

Voices change — that’s what aging does. But although Ella Fitzgerald’s style deepened — her voice gained in character and her phrasing in perception — her voice itself generated the illusion of youthfulness for decades, all the way to her sixties. What a run! Fitzgerald’s famously precise enunciation was right there from her first recording, 1938’s “A-Tisket — A-Tasket,” with Chick Webb’s orchestra. But if rock-raised ears may find Fitzgerald’s portrait-painter precision a mite proper, the very grain of her voice is always wonderfully earthy. She’s sensuous, learned, and spry, and she’s worth hearing in every phase of her career. —M.M.

To call James Brown merely a singer seems like a vast understatement. To hear Brown in his prime, say on a track like “Super Bad,” is to experience a lexicon of vocal effects, all jumbled together and delivered in a breathless barrage. That inimitable raspy croon is merely the launch pad. What sends the performance airborne is the way he offsets his phrases with attention-commanding asides — “Heh!” “Hey!” “Good God!” — hoarse exhortations, and, as he moves from the bridge back to the verse, that signature, paint-peeling scream, like Little Richard dialed way up into the red. Brown could belt out a melody with the best of them (see “Try Me” or “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”), but his real genius was turning the pop vocal into a contact sport — a technique that Michael Jackson, among others, would build an empire on. —H.S.

With a whistle tone that rivals Mariah Carey’s in her prime and a voice that is intricate and honeyed across four octaves, Grande became one of the biggest stars of the 2010s — but there are layers to her genius. Ariana is such an apt and knowledgeable vocalist that she also recognizes the power of restraint, wielding her gift in both showstopping (think “God Is a Woman”) and simple ways (Think “7 Rings”) across her already-expansive catalog. The set list for her last (and third) arena tour, named for her 2018 album, Sweetener, was absolutely relentless, a barrage of hits through which she never lost a breath. Even more impressive is her technical ability to make these massive songs. “She knows every detail about her voice,” says Savan Kotecha, a songwriting partner to Grande since her debut: “‘That note over there, that’s a little bit flat.’ We’ll be like, ‘What? No it’s not.’ She’s like, ‘Yes it is, that little syllable there.’ The way that Jimi Hendrix was with a guitar, Ariana Grande is like that with vocals.” —M.C. 

Though he was one of the Seventies’ most important vocalists, it took years for people to learn Teddy Pendergrass’ name — he came to prominence early in the decade as the lead singer, though not the leader, of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, before going solo in 1977. But his voice simply couldn’t be kept in the background: Pendergrass’ timbre was deep, wide, and towering like a Redwood, and it was a fulcrum for equally gigantic emotions. Teddy’s big masculine rumble could make a breakup sound like the world ending — “The Love I Lost,” from 1973, is the most devastated — but it could also be transportingly gentle, as on the 1975 entreaty “Wake Up Everybody.” —M.M.

One of the quintessential voices in blues music, Etta James not only helped shape early R&B and rock & roll but would also become the blueprint for a new generation of musical standards. Her buttery, versatile contralto carried her across genres and the whole gamut of complicated emotions that filled her songs. She was a vocal heartbreaker, capable of immense fury as well as tender passion at the drop of one of her raspy riffs. Most notably, her earthy and warm delivery of “At Last” has come to usher in wedded bliss for millions of couples around the globe, intertwining her memory forever with the purest musical representation of deep, bewitching romance. —B.S. 

Maybe the most remarkable thing about Aaliyah’s voice, besides its flexibility and crisp range, was its almost preternatural poise — she always seemed to be holding her power in reserve, to know every side of the scenarios she described. Yet that vocal restraint didn’t spell a limited emotional palate — far from it. Aaliyah’s careful phrasing emitted heat when the song was sensuous, and her musical intelligence is always right on the surface. We’ll never get to find out just how much deeper and richer she could have gotten with age; she passed away tragically at 22 in 2001. But the mark she made on R&B and pop during the Nineties remains permanent. —M.M.

The modern era of American popular music begins with Louis Armstrong. His voice, with its instantly distinctive gravelly tone, was also immediately lovable, working equally to comic (“You Rascal You,” from 1931) and tragic effect (his “Black and Blue,” from 1929, became a theme song). Moreover, his loose, sharp sense of swing utterly transformed pop’s sense of rhythm — not just in the instruments but the singing. Take a listen to this Fifties studio outtake, where he reteaches Lotte Lenya — the singer who originated the song — how to swing “Mack the Knife.” Hear how eager she is to learn — because she knew she was learning from the best. And that’s not to even mention his revolutionary trumpet playing. —M.M.

Some musicians dabble in the falsetto register; Curtis Mayfield lived there, singing in a honeyed croon that’s one of the most transporting vocal textures ever heard in pop music. It was a sound that paired perfectly with the Impressions’ doo-wop- and gospel-informed approach — Mayfield’s lead part on “People Get Ready” feels angelic in origin — and worked just as well in the context of the singer’s streetwise, often protest-minded solo work, whether he was chronicling the tale of a “victim of ghetto demands” on “Pusherman” or the violent death of a friend on “Billy Jack.” “The beauty of the vocal style is that the voice is tender and approachable, not aggressive or threatening,” singer Aloe Blacc said of Mayfield’s delivery in 2012, “but at the same time the lyrics are powerful and politically charged.” —H.S.

To experience the height of Van Morrison’s vocal genius, you have to get beyond the words. Zero in on, say, the free-form back half of a 1974 performance of “Listen to the Lion,” where he starts out with honeyed crooning and blissed-out humming, tries out around a dozen different cadences on the word “you” and eventually lets fly with full-on grunts and groans. Ever since his early days in Them, on through the overtly mystical years of Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece, and up to his current incarnation as a gruff R&B songman (yes, with profoundly wrongheaded views on Covid-19 vaccines and lockdowns), he’s always aimed to unify the moans and shouts of his idols like Lead Belly and Ray Charles with a insatiable quest for what Greil Marcus (via Ralph J. Gleason) likes to describe as “the yarragh” — the bedrock truth of a given song. —H.S.

Kurt Cobain’s voice was a sound at war with itself: often harsh to the point of being grotesque but resolutely melodic even at its ugliest. It’s a blend born out of his diverse vocal influences, from the twee sing-song of the Vaselines’ Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee to the wounded snarl of the Wipers’ Greg Sage. The result was a voice that could find the hooks buried within the caustic noise-metal of “School” or “Breed,” and expose the razor blade at the center of the grunge-pop apple on “Drain You” or “In Bloom.” “For me, it was always the voice that blew me away,” Deer Tick’s John McCauley, who has covered Nirvana with the band’s surviving members, told Rolling Stone. “I’d heard people with gravelly voices, but Kurt’s was different. It’s not a pretty voice; he was not a trained singer by any means. But it gave me hope.” —H.S.

Brassy and sexy and funny and sad, Dusty Springfield could blast through a wall of sound (her 1964 debut smash “I Only Wanna Be With You”), deliver the lusty shyness of “The Look of Love,” or exude the seductive sexual confidence of “Breakfast in Bed.” On “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” her 1987 hit with the Pet Shop Boys, she folded into a techno-pop context flawlessly. Her peak moment, of course, is her breathy, vulnerable, and ultimately joyful vocal on “Son of a Preacher Man,” the peak moment for an artist many call the greatest white soul singer who ever lived. —J.G. 

The wounded falsetto that launched a thousand Chris Martins — none of whom came anywhere close to matching Thom Yorke’s haunted wail on “Street Spirit,” his out-of-body high note on “Let Down,” or his weirdly magnetic muttering on “Wolf at the Door.” What those other millennial moaners couldn’t mimic was the genuine edge of alienation in Yorke’s voice, the sense that he really meant it when he sang about feeling freaked out by cars, computers, and minotaurs. If you felt that way, too, he was your man. “I’ve always had that cathartic thing with music,” he told an interviewer years later. “Even though in moments of high stress it’s very difficult to connect with music in that cathartic way, what I found was that you do connect. You end up being surprised by music. It catches you unawares.” It’s a typically understated yet eloquent way of describing the gift he’s given the world for the past 30 years. —S.V.L.

The road to the Queen of Soul, and beyond, begins with the Empress of the Blues. Bessie Smith’s uptown blues of the 1920s and ‘30s made her Mahalia Jackson’s favorite singer, inspired Dinah Washington to cut a tribute album to her, and moved Janis Joplin to purchase a headstone for her grave. Whether declaiming intimately her “Down Hearted Blues” or belting “’Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do” with joyous agency, Smith sounds like a big sister to Lizzo’s shout and Rhianna’s moan — ancestor to any and all singers who glitter like royalty while still keeping it down to earth. —D.C.

David Bowie’s rich baritone and actorly intonations made him seem at first distant to ears raised on bluesy, conversational vocal styles. But there was no distance in his singing, and as he eased into the role of rock star, it grew looser and more commanding — particularly on the high-energy rave-ups that let him rip the scenery apart vocally. In fact, it was part and parcel with his theater-kid brashness — “Life on Mars?” helped set the power-ballad template. And his many détentes with American soul music produced some of his richest singing; the falsetto breakdown of “Young Americans” may have been Bowie’s royal peak. —M.M.

Soul crooner Luther Vandross was often referred to as “the velvet voice” during his performing days, and his smooth, supple tenor added heat to slow jams like the sparkling “Here and Now” and poignance to emotional offerings like the longing “A House Is Not a Home” and the mournful “Dance With My Father.” Vandross developed a keen knowledge of singing as an art form over his career; in 2010, session musician Marcus Miller talked to NPR about Vandross’ close study of his other vocalists, and how he’d lay out the techniques artists like Dionne Warwick and Donny Hathaway used to stoke emotion. But even though he was a scholar of singing, his performances came off heartfelt and effortless. —M.J.

As a singer, Hank Williams could yodel, moan, croon, shake, quiver, whine, shout, or, in the case of his Luke the Drifter records, preach. He had an uncanny ability to wrap an entire song’s world of emotion into the delivery of a single world: There was devastating heartbreak in the way he sings the word apart in “Cold Cold Heart.” When he sang “What, you got cookin’?” in “Hey, Good Lookin’,” his exuberant and drawn-out what communicated a novel’s worth of backstory about the song’s aggressively flirtatious narrator. Or the salvation in his trembling cool when he sings “Cool Water.” Why are Hank Williams’ songs still country standards, nearly 75 years later? A huge part of the reason is how the country legend first delivered them. —J.B.

Chaka Khan’s vocal performances can be thrill rides — just listen to the delighted way she commands the end of the Prince-penned “I Feel for You,” responding to Melle Mel’s invitation to “rock” her with a drawn-out top-of-the-range “Iiiiiiii” that showcases her vocal stamina and range. That moment alone would warrant her inclusion on this list, but her catalog both as a solo artist and with the funk band Rufus has many more thanks to the way she can knock any emotion out of the park: her sliding-down-the-scale verses on “Tell Me Something Good” are balanced by her full-throated swagger on the chorus, while she commands the proto-girl-power anthem “I’m Every Woman” with the fervor of someone ready to lead her fellow females to equality’s promised land. —M.J.

Even today, 50 years gone, no one embodies the image of the “gospel singer” like Mahalia Jackson: a big woman with a bigger voice, hands clasped in front of her, eyes lifted heavenward or squeezed shut — in wonder at how she got over. Capable of Baptist solemnity and holiness exuberance, Jackson’s never-the-same-way-twice performances of “Didn’t It Rain” and “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” feature both bluesy, gale-force improvisation and a falsetto delicate as lace. Her contralto was limited, technically speaking, but she bent and forged those limits into the solid rock of American popular singing. —D.C.

Clear as mountain air, ripe as a peach, girlish well into middle age but also deeply mature, Dolly Parton’s voice is far more than, as she once memorably described it, “a cross between Tiny Tim and a nanny goat.” It’s pure as country gets — yet her pop crossover in the late Seventies seems as natural in retrospect as her multimedia stardom, an obvious byproduct of her magnetism. Listen again to “Jolene” and get caught up in the understated, devastating drama of Dolly’s chorus pleas. Tune in to the elastic vowels and deep commitment of the Porter Wagoner-written hymn “When I Sing for Him.” —M.M.

Paul McCartney is a genius at so many things — songwriting, production, playing all the instruments but especially bass — that it’s no small claim that he may be a better singer than he is anything else. John Lennon’s scream was for the ages, but Paul’s was almost equally intense and even more virtuosic (cf. “Helter Skelter”). He can approach a ballad so tenderly he brings so-so lyrics to brilliant life — no one will ever top his original “Here, There and Everywhere.” And from “I Saw Her Standing There” to “Band on the Run” to the charged moments of the recent McCartney III, few in rock can match him as a pure belter. —M.M.

Growing up, Mary J. Blige turned to singing as an escape, and early on she often wrestled her demons in performance. “There would be times where she would be in the studio singing and it would be the dopest take in the world, but she would be crying,” producer Chucky Thompson recalled of working on Blige’s second album, My Life. But the singer took a firmer grip on her life and career, and her singing gained in turn — the deep emotion intact, the pitchiness eliminated. Most of all, the character — someone who’s been through it and refuses to give up. —M.M.

George Jones’ dynamic range was huge, and he utilized it to the full, but he seldom seemed to be showboating. Though his high spirits could be wildly entertaining, from the speedy early “Why Baby Why” to the goofy late “Yabba Dabba Doo! (So Are You),” Jones was country music’s master brooder. The way he’d dip low on a word in the middle of a line (“He said, ‘I’ll love you till I die’,” the opener of “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” from 1980) to give the word, and the listener, a shiver, conveyed a man so full of feeling he doesn’t know what to do with that it bursts out of him in fits. —M.M.

Smokey Robinson is such a giant as a songwriter, but his voice is the heart of his legend. As his fellow Motown star Martha Reeves said, “With his tone and delivery, you could fall in love with Smokey.” The Motown empire was built around Robinson — when he hits those impossibly delicate high notes, it’s the essence of romantic pleading. He was raised on Fifties doo-wop, but he invented his own soul style with the Miracles, squeezing so much emotion out of ballads like “Ooo Baby Baby,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” or “The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage.” He taught the Beatles how to sing — as Paul McCartney put it, “Smokey Robinson was like God in our eyes.” Yet his voice got more powerful, more seductive, over time, in mature classics like “Cruisin’” or his hugely influential A Quiet Storm. Cruise on forever, Smokey. —R.S.

Listen to the way Adele has matured over the years and you’ll hear a woman literally finding her voice. Her mezzo-soprano had a world-weary edge to it from the late-‘00s days of “Chasing Pavements,” but the combustible “Rolling in the Deep” portrays her pain in full flower, her voice breaking into a near-weep as she reels with vengeance and regret. On “Someone Like You,” her tear-jerking smash from 21, she gives a performance worthy of a single-spotlighted stage, with rich, rounded vowels that give away her growing sense of self in the wake of a breakup. Adele’s range has grown on her recent records; her pinched kiss-offs give the glitchy 25 cut “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” added bite, while on the loose-limbed “All Night Parking,” from 30, her vocal style borders on effervescence. As Adele’s commanding, raspy wail’s stylistic range grows, she only becomes more powerful. —M.J.

“Birds flying high, you know I feel/Sun in the sky, you know how I feel,” Nina Simone sang on 1965’s “Feeling Good.” And anyone who’s ever heard it knows how she felt, too; the euphoria pulsing through her voice spoke for itself. Simone could channel every facet of lived experience. She brought out the rage in her civil rights protest songs (“Mississippi Goddam,” “Four Women”), her pride in “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and her joie de vivre in her rendition of Hair’s “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life.” Commenting on Simone’s 1976 performance of Janis Ian’s “Stars,” Brittany Howard recently said, “The way Nina sang that was so incredibly visceral and true and real, like she was singing about her life, even though she didn’t write the words.” —K.G.

Interviewers often remarked on the precision of Marvin Gaye’s speaking voice, and that quality shone through his singing, as well — every ad-libbed syllable is crystal clear, even when he slurs the note. It’s his richness that draws the ear: velvety, yearning, endlessly assured, with a sandpaper roughness he calls on for key moments, to balance out his swooning head falsetto. And his gift for drama was first-rate: Listen again to how he rolls out the lyric of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” or creates palpable erotic heat with “Let’s Get It On.” And then listen some more. It’s irresistible. —M.M.

The breath control, the careful study of every lyric, the relentless search for vocal perfection — Sinatra was a titan behind the microphone before he was anything. Few singers have conveyed the depth of emotion Sinatra could: “How Insensitive,” his 1967 collaboration with Antônio Carlos Jobim, is as morose as a man can sound while still standing up, while on the immortal “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” from 1956, he shades the song’s ebullience with a relaxed maturity that communicated the good life to postwar Americans who’d grown up with Frankie on the radio. Sinatra’s rakish charm and ability to excavate a song’s emotional core can still amaze. —M.M.

You can hear so much of Celia Cruz’s life story in her voice: Her rich, inimitable tone captured the warmth and vibrancy of Havana, often evoking the call of street vendors and the power of Afro-Cuban santero songs from her childhood. Though she rose to fame in Cuba, she became a star in New York City, showcasing her endless charisma and mighty vocal strength alongside history’s biggest salsa acts. No matter who she performed with, Cruz always shone radiantly, her magic tied into her ability to make people feel: She could capture nostalgia and yearning, or she could let out a call of “Azúcar!” and embody the exuberance for life that continues to make her one of the most transcendent singers of all time. —J.L.

Elvis Presley’s voice was a sui generis instrument: weepy highs and rich lows, capable of landing “Don’t Be Cruel” at No. 1 on the U.S. pop, R&B, and country charts in 1956. Elvis’ heroes included Fats Domino, Roy Orbison, and Dean Martin, but he didn’t sing like any of them. Orbison, in fact, said, “There are a lot of people who are good actors at singing … with Elvis, he lives it altogether.” Early sides such as “That’s All Right, Mama” were joyful blasts of enthusiasm. His palette expanded in the Sixties and Seventies: 1961’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is a transcendent example of his skills as a crooner, and his passion for gospel shines on “How Great Thou Art,” a thunderous live staple. But 1969’s “Suspicious Minds” might be the ultimate Elvis moment. From the controlled opening to the explosive chorus, Elvis drives this juggernaut with swagger to spare. He lived them all. —J.G.

There’s no choir quite like a choir of Princes. Play “Adore,” the heavenly climax of 1987’s Sign o’ the Times, and bask in that plush assemblage of overdubbed voices, in multiple registers, assembled with audible glee by the guy who also sings lead and plays most of the instruments. Singing seems to have been personal with Prince — he routinely ordered his engineers out of the room whenever he cut a vocal — and on the masterful “When Doves Cry” or the Emancipation highlight “The Holy River,” he achieves a rare, stunning intimacy that only deepens showman moves like the fluty falsetto of “Kiss.” —M.M.

To some listeners, Bob Dylan’s voice, especially the wheezy and/or aggressively twangy strains he favored in his early years, will always sound like a caricature of itself. But the confidence with which he owned his ugly-duckling delivery, and shaped it into something as expressive as his wildly inventive lyrics, has made him one of America’s great vocal eccentrics. Once he was fully in control of his instrument, he could use it to express everything from wry disdain (“Like a Rolling Stone”) to deep devotion (“If Not for You”), wrenching pathos (the Basement Tapes masterpiece “Goin’ to Acapulco”) and sardonic venom (“Idiot Wind”). (On 1969’s Nashville Skyline, he even morphed into a clean-voiced crooner.) And in his later years, he’s built an entire mature style out of his increasingly ragged-throated sound, moving freely between wistful romance (see Triplicate readings like “My One and Only Love”) and bawdy black comedy (“False Prophet”). —H.S.

Freddie Mercury’s soul-stirring vibrato and four-octave vocal range — as well as his overwhelming charisma — ignited the music of Queen, making their art rock an arresting spectacle. “Bohemian Rhapsody” offers a crash course in Mercury’s greatness, thanks to its balladic bookends, feisty rock moments, and operatic middle — including the breakdown where Mercury’s vocals, accompanied by guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor’s, were mega-dubbed into a giant choir. Queen’s catalog is stuffed with other moments that show just how talented Mercury was: “Somebody to Love” floats on air as Mercury soars through octaves and moods effortlessly, “Another One Bites the Dust” is all snap and swagger, and “The Show Must Go On” is a ruefully appropriate coda, Mercury putting in a full-throated performance even as he sang of his deteriorating health. —M.J.

Country-pop pioneer Patsy Cline’s career was cut short — she passed away in a plane crash at age 30 —but her strong yet supple voice is why she remains the standard-bearer for aspiring heartbreak chroniclers in Nashville and beyond. Cline attributed her contralto’s richness to a particularly grisly bout with rheumatic fever she’d had at 13: “You might say it was my return to the living after several days that launched me as a singer,” she wryly noted in 1957. But the nuanced way she interpreted her lovestruck material — her bursting-dam approach to the self-flagellating “Crazy,” her besotted seething on “I Fall to Pieces” — gave her performances emotional heft, and it’s a big reason why she’s still plucking heartstrings six decades after her death. —M.J.   

John Lennon’s voice was like his mind — agile, bright as a bell, startlingly alive. From his screamed-out version of Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)” with the Beatles out-rocking the Motown original to the seething motormouth of “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)” to even a lesser later rocker like “What You Got,” singing with everything he had was Lennon’s trademark. His first solo album, 1970’s Plastic Ono Band, is still astonishing — as critic Robert Christgau put it, “a complete tour of rock timbre from scream to whine.” The same can be said for the White Album — in particular, the transition from “Julia” to “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.” —M.M.

Little Richard is the patron saint of every singer who’s ever pushed their voice to the limit, and right past it, in the name of sending the listener into a frenzy. His immortal hits are clinics in how to generate excitement via constantly upping the vocal ante: On “Long Tall Sally,” he roars out of the gate with a gritty shout before switching to a vertigo-inducing falsetto “whoo-oo-oo-oo!,” and on “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” he chases further extremes of supercharged intensity, settling into a peak snarl that sounds hazardous to try to emulate and, leading into the sax solo, letting loose with a proto-punk scream that foreshadows everyone from Prince to Iggy Pop. —H.S.

There’s something feline about Al Green’s voice — a sinuous flexibility that flares up in places the listener isn’t expecting, which is always welcome. Few singers create the illusion of being carried away by the very song they’re singing the way he can. Whether he’s lying in a hard Memphis funk groove, like a python ready to dart (see the early “I’m a Ram”), or overdubbing multiple ethereal falsettos (a la the climax of “Have You Been Making Out OK”), the Rev. Green can evoke rapturous transport like it’s effortless. The truth was quite different — he worked hard on his classics — but whether he’s singing about God or eros, Green is the ultimate soul man. —M.M.

Onstage — start with his commanding performance at 1967’s Monterey Pop festival — Otis Redding was so boundless and revved up that he could literally make a stage shake. But especially in the studio, his emotive rasp was a marvel of controlled restraint. In his most penetrating soul ballads, like “Try a Little Tenderness,” “Mr. Pitiful,” and “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” Redding relished each anguished word, adding exclamatory lines at the end of phrases but never overdoing them. Another testament to his power: the way he could cover rock & roll hits, like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” and make you forget that anyone had sung them before he had. —D.B.

In Beyoncé’s voice lies the entire history of Black music. She is one of pop’s great historians, an artist so in love with the heroes who shape her that she can’t help but find opportunities to pay homage to them in her music, performance and, of course, her singing. But there’s nothing derivative about what Beyoncé does: Instead, she has heeded the lessons she can glean from Prince, Tina, Diana, Michael, Janet, Donna, and more and shaped herself into an icon worth standing next to those titans, even while still at the top of her game. At times brashly Southern or cherubically hymnal, her malleability and penchant for vocal theatricals have allowed her range to successfully fit into everything from funk to country to hard rock (sometimes all on the same album). And she’s as good a rapper as she is songbird, mastering each turn with ineffable control and power. —B.S.

Whatever tone Stevie Wonder is aiming for, from starry-eyed romance to gritty realism, his voice can convey it with ease. Few other singers could so convincingly sell both the unabashed tenderness of “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” or “I Just Called to Say I Love You” and the simmering anger that underlies “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” or “Living for the City.” The last song showcases Wonder’s patented growl, one of many vocal tactics he uses to push a song into overdrive (see also: the upper-register melodic acrobatics heard on “Sir Duke” or the gospel-like swoops on the climax of “They Won’t Go When I Go”). Talking about singers who “squall,” or favor an overheated delivery, in a 2014 interview, D’Angelo singled Wonder out. “The thing about Stevie Wonder,” he said, “was that he brought these vocal mechanics into the squall that other motherfuckers just couldn’t do.” —H.S.

“People call me a jazz singer and a blues singer, but I don’t really know the difference,” Ray Charles told an interviewer in 1963. “I just try to sing a song, and I only sing songs I like to sing. And I try to put a little bit of soul into everything.” He meant everything — Charles was a titan of R&B, pop, jazz, and country alike, and the reason his first retrospective box set, in 1991, was titled The Birth of Soul is because it was Ray’s rewriting of a gospel song as the straightforwardly lascivious “I Got a Woman” that made soul music happen. And he turned one of the most anodyne of national hymns, “America the Beautiful,” into a soul-wrenching epic. The man could make anything soulful. —M.M.

Range, dahhling, is exactly what Mariah Carey possesses. Across five staggering octaves, the Elusive Chanteuse can pivot easily between a biting, taunting growl to an unreal whistle tone so sharply delivered it could cut steel. Since 1990’s “Vision of Love,” the singer-songwriter has always straddled the delicate balance between old-school soul and R&B with modern, often forward-thinking pop. Her secret has long been a sweetness that can be at times either angelic or devilish, depending on how she wields the multitude of secret vocal weapons she has in her arsenal. Everything from coy, breathy coos to guttural, full-bodied belts can be deployed with equally electrifying results. By combining her operatic vocal talents with a tough attitude and penchant for high glamor and drama, Carey birthed generations of imitators in her wake. But those she influenced still can’t beat the architect of modern pop’s sound. —B.S.

Other jazz-vocal legends like Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald thrived on refinement; Billie Holiday privileged emotional truth. It’s a quality that gave her a special status among fellow artists, from her longtime saxophone foil Lester Young to Miles Davis, who wrote in his autobiography that when Holiday would sing a ballad like “I Loves You Porgy,” about a woman tormented by an abusive lover, “you could almost feel that shit she was feeling. It was beautiful and sad the way she sang that.” She’ll always be known as a poet of gloom, her slow-drip delivery perfectly suited to the forlorn (“Lover Man”) or downright morbid (“Strange Fruit,” an aptly sickening condemnation of lynching), but she could also use the openness in her voice to convey overflowing elation (“Too Marvelous for Words”). “Billie Holiday makes you hear the content and intent of every word she sings — even at the expense of her pitch or tone,” Joni Mitchell once said. “Billie is the one that touches me deepest.” —H.S.

There is American popular music before Sam Cooke and popular music after. He was already a gospel superstar with the Soul Stirrers when he went solo in 1957 and immediately began defining the idea of “soul music” both as a crossover star and musical innovator. His tenor seduced on 1957’s “You Send Me,” and it enchanted on “Wonderful World,” a song that in lesser hands might’ve sounded corny. But few singers savored being inside a song the way Cooke did. He did spotless standards on 1964’s Live at the Copacabana and a smooth version of gutbucket R&B on One Night Stand — Live at the Harlem Square Club, a badass 1963 set unreleased until 1985. And then there is his 1964 masterpiece “A Change Is Gonna Come.” A civil rights activist inspired by hearing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin in the Wind,” Cooke wails “I was booorrrn by the river…” over rising strings and matches the music emotion for emotion. —J.G.

The standard-bearer for R&B vocals, Whitney Houston possessed a soprano that was as powerful as it was tender. Take her cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which became one of the defining singles of the 1990s; it opens with her gently brooding, her unaccompanied voice sounding like it’s turning over the idea of leaving her lover behind with the lightest touch. By the end, it’s transformed into a showcase for her limber, muscular upper register; she sings the title phrase with equal parts bone-deep feeling and technical perfection, turning the conflicted emotions at the song’s heart into a jumping-off point for her life’s next step.

Houston’s self-titled 1985 debut came out a bit more than six months before her 22nd birthday, and it established her as one of pop’s most potent vocalists. That was no accident: In 1993, Houston recalled how her upbringing, where she was around R&B greats like Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack — as well as her mother, the gospel singer Cissy Houston — immersed her in the idea of belting out her feelings. “It had a great impact on me as a singer, as a performer, as a musician. Growing up around it, you just can’t help it,” she said. “I identified with it immediately. It was something that was so natural to me that when I started singing, it was almost like speaking.” Houston’s natural delivery made the moments where she broke into record-breaking vocal runs; “Saving All My Love for You,” from her 1985 debut, feels like a wrenching talk with a skittish lover even as she’s hitting high notes, while the way her glum loneliness gives over to giggly jubilance on the sad-happy standard-bearer “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” remains as delightful on the 100th listen as it did on the first. Houston voice will resonate for decades beyond her 2012 passing. —M.J.

A force of nature. A work of genius. A gift from the heavens. Aretha Franklin’s voice is all that and more, which is why she remains the unchallenged Queen, years after her final bow. Her singing is the most magnificent sound to emerge from America — more universal than Coltrane’s horn, bolder than Hendrix’s guitar. She blew up worldwide with her 1967 hit “Respect,” claiming her throne as the greatest pop, rock, or soul singer ever. As Mary J. Blige told Rolling Stone, “She is the reason why women want to sing.” 

Aretha could express jubilation, as heard in her gospel doc Amazing Grace. She could summon the deepest heartbreak, in ballads like “Ain’t No Way.” Her artistry is the greatest achievement of American music, if not American history. But her voice is the crossroads where all different musical traditions meet, from gospel to funk to rock to the blues. As she said, “I guess you could say I do a lot of traveling with my voice.” 

She grew up as Detroit gospel royalty, getting her lessons in the church from Mahalia Jackson. At first, her label tried to mold her into a slick lounge singer, but she quit the crossover game, after meeting another young outsider on the label whose voice didn’t fit the pop mold: Bob Dylan. As she told writer Gerri Hirshey, “Neither of us was what you call — ah — mainstream.”

Aretha went to Muscle Shoals and became Lady Soul, creating her own raw, intense R&B sound. She forced the mainstream to cross over to her, changing the way music sounded ever since, all over the world. Her genius has taken so many forms: 1970s gospel, 1980s glam-disco, her collabos with disciples like Whitney Houston and Lauryn Hill. Or the night she stole the Grammys, singing “Nessun Dorma” without a rehearsal. 

But whatever she sang, she claimed it as her own. And as long as you live, you’ll never hear anything like Aretha Franklin. That’s why her voice still goes right on changing the world. Singer of singers. Queen of queens. All hail Lady Soul. —R.S.