50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 1. Aretha Franklin

When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no one who can touch her. She is the reason why women want to sing. Aretha has everything — the power, the technique. She is honest with everything she says. Everything she’s thinking or dealing with is all in the music, from “Chain of Fools” to “Respect” to her live performances. And she has total confidence; she does not waver at all.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 2. Ray Charles

Ray Charles had the most unique voice in popular music. He would do these improvisational things, a little laugh or a “Huh-hey!” It was as if something struck him as he was singing and he just had to react to it. He was getting a kick out of what he was doing. And his joy was infectious.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 3. Elvis Presley

There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves. It’s transfiguration.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 4. Ella Fitzgerald

With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 5. John Lennon

There was a tremendous intimacy in everything John Lennon did, combined with a formidable intellect. That is what makes him a great singer. In “Girl,” on Rubber Soul, he starts in this steely, high voice: “Is there anybody going to listen to my story… .” It’s so impassioned, like somebody stepping from the shadows in a room. But when he comes to the chorus, you suddenly realize: He’s talking directly to her.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 6. Marvin Gaye

There’s no sound like Marvin Gaye: the way he sang so softly, almost gently — but also with so much power. That came straight from the heart. Everything in his life — everything that he thought and felt — affected his singing.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 7. Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan did what very, very few singers ever do. He changed popular singing. And we have been living in a world shaped by Dylan’s singing ever since. 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. To understand Bob Dylan’s impact as a singer, you have to imagine a world without Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Lucinda Williams or any other vocalist with a cracked voice, dirt-bowl yelp or bluesy street howl. It is a vast list, but so were the influences on Dylan, from the Talmudic chanting of Allen Ginsberg in “Howl” to the deadpan Woody Guthrie and Lefty Frizzell’s murmur. There is certainly iron ore in there, and the bitter cold of Hibbing, Minnesota, blowing through that voice. It’s like a knotted fist, and it allows Dylan to sing the most melancholy tunes and not succumb to sentimentality. What’s interesting is that later, as he gets older, the fist opens up, to a vulnerability.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 8. Otis Redding

He was all emotion.It was like,”This guy is definitely not singing for the money.” Range was not a factor in his singing. His range was somewhat limited. He had no really low notes and no really high notes. But Otis would do anything that implied emotion, and that’s where his physicality came in, because he was such a strong, powerful man. Backstage, he would be like a prizefighter waiting to get out there. Playing “Respect” live with him was just energy and relentless joy. Without singing, Otis was more distracted, not sure of himself. He couldn’t make the same movements in the studio when he sang. He was more restricted.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 9. Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder’s voice always sounds like tears of joy — like he’s right on the verge of crying, but it’s out of glee and peace, as opposed to the pain of someone like a Sly Stone. There’s a richness to his voice, a clarity to all of its inflections. That vibrato is so impactful and piercing, but he never loses that underlying straightforward singing voice. His lack of sight must heighten his other senses, his ability to imagine and feel. It makes his music very visual, very graphic.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 10. James Brown

The impact of his voice was a simple presentation and didn’t trade on range. And there was that scream. It was like an inner voice. It sounded like an assertion of rights of primitive man: “I am alive, and I can do things.” He used to describe his dancing as “African nerve control.” He had a point. If you go back to his early recordings, he was trying to sing standards. He didn’t quite have what it took.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 11. Paul McCartney

“Paul is like an impressionist painter,” says James Taylor, who had the privilege of watching the Beatles record the White Album in 1968. “The pieces of his music are so elementary, yet the overall thing is so sophisticated. He’s such a precise and controlled singer.” On songs from the Beatles’ frenzied “I’m Down” to his own “Maybe I’m Amazed,” McCartney revealed himself as one of rock’s most agile and melodic screamers. But McCartney, who learned vocal harmonies from his musician father, is at least as gifted as a balladeer, drawing on British music-hall sounds from his childhood as much as Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers for songs such as “Yesterday” and “Michelle.” “People chose Lennon or McCartney,” says Taylor. “I was definitely on the McCartney side. He makes a beautiful sound.”

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 12. Little Richard

“When I heard [‘Long Tall Sally’], it was so great I couldn’t speak,” said John Lennon. “I didn’t want to leave Elvis, but this was so much better.” Richard Penniman grew up wailing gospel in church in Macon, Georgia, and he carried his feverish foundation with him into rock & roll: On songs like “Lucille” and “Tutti-Frutti,” he sounded like a preacher wrestling the devil to the ground. When he belted, “I’m gonna rip it up/I’m gonna shake it up” in 1956, Richard wasn’t just singing about the weekend — his falsetto shrieks were demolishing the rules of pop singing. It was a voice that leapt with a fury out of transistor radios, leaving scorch marks on an entire generation of singers and musicians. Said Jimi Hendrix, who played in Richard’s backing band, “I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice.”

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 13. Roy Orbison

Tom Petty called him “probably the greatest singer in the world.” Another of his fellow Traveling Wilburys, Bob Dylan, said he had “the voice of a professional criminal.” Roy Orbison shared rockabilly roots with Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley — he recorded the bopping “Ooby Dooby” at Sun Records in 1956 — before his soaring, symphonic vocals brought a new level of majesty and mystery to rock in the early Sixties. “Songs like ‘Leah’ and ‘In Dreams’ start out challenging, then just climb and climb into the stratosphere,” says Chris Isaak. Dion, who toured with Orbison, says that he actually sang very softly: “I’d be two feet away, and when he hit those high notes, it was quiet and heartfelt. But the emotion would go through you like a power drill.”

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 14. Mick Jagger

His sense of pitch and melody is really sophisticated. His vocals are stunning, flawless in their own kind of perfection. There are certain songs where he just becomes a different person.

50 Greatest Singers Of All Time 15. Tina Turner

I’ll never forget the first time I saw [Tina] perform,” said Beyoncé. “I never in my life saw a woman so powerful, so fearless.” Turner started touring with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue almost half a century ago; her breakthrough was their blazing 1971 cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” which included the declaration that she never does anything “nice and easy.” “She was so direct, so raw,” says John Fogerty, who wrote the song. Age has only deepened the ache and grit in her powerhouse cries and moans during her long career as a solo artist. Melissa Etheridge said that Turner’s voice defies classification. “You can’t say soul, R&B, rock & roll,” Etheridge said. “She’s all of it! She can squeeze passion from any line.”