Jeff Buckley Grace

10 Best Male Vocalists

Rolling Stone magazine recently published its list of The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. To my mind, they did a good job – covering a lot of bases, and highlighting some excellent vocalists. But it’s received a lot of negative attention, most notably for its omission of Celine Dion. Irate Dion fans travelled six hours from Montreal to New York to stage a protest at Rolling Stone’s offices. I’m on Rolling Stone’s side – Dion sings a bunch of boring adult contemporary ballads, and her voice is devoid of personality despite its histrionics.

And if Celine Dion is supposedly the great singer that she says she is why is there auto-tune on every f***ing word in her songs? Can’t you just hit it, Celine? Do you have another baby book to shoot? You gotta paint your baby to look like a pot of peas? What are you doing that you can’t be singing in the studio? It’s your f***ing job!

Neko Case, Pitchfork

Rolling Stone’s list reminded me that I’ve been meaning to split my 10 favourite vocalists list into male and female lists. So here’s the male list – I couldn’t squeeze in James Brown, David Bowie, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Stevie Wonder, Bono, Paul McCartney, or Gene Ween. As a one-man website, it’s obviously extremely subjective – just ten voices that I always like to hear, listed in alphabetical order.:

10 Best Male Vocalists

Jeff Buckley Grace

Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley‘s vocals are less idiosyncratic than the exploratory moaning of his father Tim. He only made one album before his drowning in Memphis. Grace showed a supremely talented and adaptable vocalist – he was able to delicately navigate Benjamin Britten’s hymn ‘Corpus Christi Carol’ and deliver sneering rockers like ‘Eternal Life’. His incomplete second album, compiled on Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk, showcases an incredible falsetto on ‘Everybody Here Wants You’.


MARVIN GAYE

Gaye started his career in Motown as a session drummer. He became a headliner, notable for his duets with Tammi Terrell and classic albums like What’s Goin’ On and Let’s Get It On. Gaye had three distinct voices – according to Wikipedia, “his smooth, sweet tenor; a growling rasp; and an unreal falsetto”. He became an expert at multi-tracking himself – all the vocals on ‘What’s Goin’ On’ are performed by Gaye.

In order to get himself into a “pure” headspace to sing, Gaye would seclude himself in a locked room and masturbate for hours. Free from sexual tension, he’d step to the microphone and let God flow through him and commit his voice to tape, knowing the words he sang were coming from a place of purity.

https://www.cbc.ca/music/50-things-you-need-to-know-about-marvin-gaye-s-what-s-going-on-1.5054267

AL GREEN

The Reverend Al Green’s voice could soar from a likeable tenor into an effortless falsetto, effortlessly beautiful. His songs mixed carnality and spirituality, like ‘Take Me To The River’ and ‘Full of Fire’.


John Lennon Legend The Very Best Of

JOHN LENNON

All of The Beatles could sing well, but Lennon was the star with his engaging voice. Paul McCartney was technically the better singer, with a bigger range, but Lennon had the ability to infuse his voice with feeling, often his sardonic wit. George Martin stated that Lennon was masterful at double-tracking his vocals, a technique that sounded great on psychedelic records like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Just like his records with The Beatles, his solo career captured diverse vocal moods, from the rawness of ‘Cold Turkey’ to the smoothness of ‘Woman’.


Queen The Works

FREDDIE MERCURY

Queen‘s Freddie Mercury was a natural showman, with the ability to sing pounding rockers and delicate ballads. He had a rich, four-octave voice and an unusually fast vibrato which gave his voice a distinct character. His Queen colleagues Brian May and Roger Taylor were also strong singers, and the three of them combined beautifully for big-sounding and elaborate harmonies.


Van Morrison Veedon Fleece

Van Morrison

Van Morrison started his career with garage-rockers Them, delivering bluesy hits like ‘Gloria’ and ‘Here Comes The Night’. His solo career enabled him to stretch out, with the acclaimed jazz explorations of Astral Weeks and lengthy vocal workouts like ‘Listen to the Lion’ and ‘And the Healing Has Begun’.


Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison’s vibrato-laden voice is instantly distinctive, whether on solo hits like ‘Crying’ and ‘Only The Lonely’, or his late-career stint in the Travelling Wilburys. Country singer Dwight Yoakam described Orbison’s voice as “the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window”


MIKE PATTON

Faith No More Angel Dust

Patton’s fearless approach to music-making helped him explore the twisted potential of his voice. While he started with the rap-rock of Faith No More’s The Real Thing, Patton’s subsequent work has often ventured into the avant-garde, giving him the opportunity to experiment with his voice. He’s noted for his extreme vocal range of 6 and a half octaves. Unusually, he experienced a marked change in his voice during his recording career, dropping from an adolescent squeal on 1989’s The Real Thing to a guttural growler on 1992’s Angel Dust.


Scott Walker

Scott Walker started his career as a crooner, with the Walker Brothers then as a highly successful solo artists. But as the 1960s came to a close, Walker took control of his career, writing his own material. Even as he reverted to middle-of-the-road material in the early 1970s or explored more esoteric territory on albums like 1995’s Tilt, his voice remained sumptuous.


CARL WILSON

The Beach Boys boasted an ensemble of excellent vocalists – Brian Wilson’s falsetto and Mike Love’s bass were both features of their sound. It was the gorgeous, pure mid-range of Carl Wilson, however, that emerged as their strongest instrument. Carl was the youngest Wilson sibling – he was still a teenager when he sang the lead on ‘God Only Knows’. He became the group’s most-used lead vocalist by the mid-1960s, anchoring key songs like ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘Darlin”. His beautiful voice even made moments of the tacky late-period hit ‘Kokomo’ tolerable.

Did I leave out your favourite male vocalist?

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72 Comments

  1. It’s an impossible errand!

    You don’t have anyone from the last 30 years – Bono or Michael Stipe or Brandon Flowers or Chris Martin or oasis or even Sting.

    Funny re Niko Case’s comment about CD on pitchfork. Mostly she’s untouchable in Canada. But not really.

    It’s a good list but I can do without Wilson or anything to do with the beach boys. Give me John Fogerty or Springsteen or a bunch of others.

    • Jeff Buckley is from the last 30 years, and the bulk of Patton’s stuff is there as well. You’re right that it leans old though – most of these artists first recorded in the 1960s, and Orbison and Gaye might even be 1950s.

  2. I like your list, but 10 isn’t enough time to list them all. (which you have already said.) I would also add Bono and Brandon Flowers and two more whose voices I can’t get enough of: Josh Homme who I’m rather new to, but his singing on Post Pop Depression is out of this world; and Chris Cornell. OK let’s throw Eddie Vedder in there also 🙂

  3. p.s. any “singer” who uses vocaloids should be immediately disqualified. Are you going to have a separate list for female singers, or are they in the list you put the link in to share?

    • Yeah, I’ll make a female list as well, but it might be a few weeks away. The four already in the previous list will all make it, obviously.

  4. You can do it by decade too. For sure I would include Layne Staley from Alice in Chains, Bono, Chris Cornell, Thom Yorke, the guy from A-ha, John Wetton, Daryll Hall, Paul McCartney, Carl Wilson, all the guys from The Byrds, Michael Hutchence, Corey Glover. From the Latín World, Luis Miguel.

  5. I think three on your list are really great and that would be Roy Orbison, Carl Wilson and Al Green. And Van Morrison kind of. And none of the rest are really horrible or anything. But I think the Rolling Stone list had just so much crapola on it. If they make another one in 10 years half of those people on the list won’t be there anymore . Actually i’m kind of surprised Celine Dion isn’t on it because most of the people that are on it are about on the same level as her. I think I made a list of favorite singers here on your thing but I wouldn’t know where to find it

  6. I haven’t yet seen the RS list but every single one of their lists is controversial. Not down to the “we will protest at RS offices” level but damn near. Especially the guitar ones. I did my list of favorite singers a while back. I’ll dig that up and post the male singers here. I doubt it’s changed much if at all.

    • I think Rolling Stone are generally struggling with identity – they formed around covering the late 1960s, and stayed championing the 1960s and 1970s for a long time, and are now trying to grow more inclusive.

        • I have a tatty book with some of their 1960s interviews and it’s pretty amazing. When rock music was the peak of its cultural relevance with fascinating characters like Captain Beefheart and Grace Slick.

          • I love the Captain Beefheart article in mine.

            “In another classic story of this sort, Herb Cohen of Straight recalls that one day he noticed that Beefheart had ordered 20 sets of sleigh bells for a recording session. Cohen pointed out that even if Frank Zappa and the engineer were added to the bell ringing this would account for only 14 sleigh bells — one in each hand of the performers. “What are you going to do with the other six?” he asked. “We’ll overdub them,” Beefheart replied.”

          • Really/ That seems odd. His biggest album was something called “Trout Mask Replica,” which I don’t recall having much impact on me.

  7. Exactly.

    So from the 90s

    Eddie Vedder
    Chris Cornell
    M Hutchens
    Michael Stipe
    Gord Downie
    Layne Staley
    Thom Yorke
    Tom Petty
    Kurt Cobain
    Jeff Tweedy

    The guys from collective soul and third eye blind. (So that’s actually 12) !

    • A lot of those started in the 1980s though, or 1970s for Petty. So you could probably get it down to 10 pretty easily.

      Yorke has a big range, but there’s always a bit of whine in his voice. Stipe has a lovely voice, I reckon, even though he sings within himself and isn’t attention-grabbing.

      • The 80s for some, agreed. There was a (now famous) concert in the late 80s at some dive bar in Madison, WS where nirvana opened for the tragically hip. Around 40 souls paid exactly $5 to go (in the rain).

        But if you have a ticket stub from it, it’s worth a lot more today. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

          • Probably, since Nirvana are much more widely known globally.

            But the Hip have a much more extensive library than Nirvana, for obvious sad reasons.

            The Seattle music community (including Pearl Jam) have a very close relationship with the Canada music scene, especially Neil Young and TTH (who are also done recording, obviously)

  8. A very noble effort on your part and I have no debate about any of them being on your list. My weird curiosity here but was Ronnie James Dio in the top 200? An even longer shot, Danny Vaughn? However, Celine Dion fans need to get a grip.

  9. okay mine goes like this

    Jim Morrison
    Eric Burdon
    Scott Weiland
    Robert Plant
    Jimi Hendrix
    Elvis Presley
    Jack Bruce
    Harry Nilsson
    Roger Daltrey
    Richard Butler or Allan Clarke

    of course, I’d have a next 10 that would have Al Green and Carl Wilson and a bunch of others

    • I actually considered Scott W on my 90s list. Funny.

      And Eric B is a great choice also.

      I don’t think the king or Morrison or even Jimmy H had the range that you need to make the singing hall of fame – if it has to be only 10. I’ll take prince or someone like that.

    • I had a big think about Richard Butler when I was making the list – he’s very distinctive. Nilsson is a good call as well. I’ve always thought vocals were Hendrix’s weakest aspect – behind guitar, production, and songwriting.

      • I never understood why Jimi Hendrix is never mentioned when people are talking about great singers. His singing is just so wonderful and enjoyable and its as distinctive and memorable as his guitar playing. I never understood that.

  10. My list: (In looking at it from my post, I’ve juggled it a bit)

    1 – John Lennon
    2 – Bruce Springsteen
    3 – B.B. King
    4 – Stevie Wonder
    5 – Gregg Allman
    6 – Mick Jagger
    7 – Ray Charles
    8 – Paul McCartney
    9 – Elvis Presley
    10 – Bob Dylan

  11. Also I would consider from the 80s:

    Morissey
    Kevin Cronin (REO speed wagon).

    In case we are going deep into the vault.

    • Morrissey was on the Rolling Stone list – he’s one of the singers that the pro-Celine crowd have been deriding. I like his voice, except on the woe-is-me songs like ‘Never Had No One Ever’.

  12. Hmmm . . . . Let’s see, off the cuff, I think I would go with . . .

    Paul McCartney
    John Wetton
    Greg Lake
    Elvis Presley
    Peter Tosh
    John Balance
    David Bowie
    Buggy Jive
    John Cale
    Rev. James Cleveland
    Nick Cave

    As with all such lists, if asked again a month from now, I would probably think of a quite different slate . . .

      • Prog is pretty demanding to sing – I’d probably take Gabriel as my favourite, but anyone who can deliver weird lyrics over classical-derived music convincingly is impressive.

    • Yeah, he’s distinctive but I find his early stuff hard to listen to sometimes. His voice is pretty much ok in the 1970s I reckon, but not a great singer.

  13. Here are some under the radar guys:

    John Legend
    Mark Knofler
    Matt Benninger (the National)
    Samir Ghadia (Young the Giant)
    Caleb Followill (Kings of Leon)
    Damon Albern (Gorillaz/Blur)
    James Mercer (the Shins/Broken Bells)
    Graham Parker
    Robert Cray
    Smokey Robinson
    George Harrison
    Peter Frampton
    Bob Mould
    Jack Johnson
    Ben Harper

    (Ok so it’s a bit of a stretch to say Knofler, Harrison and Robinson are under the radar)

    • There are a few guts I don’t know on there, like Young the Giant, while I only know Robert Cray as a name. I’m not that keen on The National – I often struggle with baritones.

    • I’ve always thought George Harrison and Peter Frampton are very good too, but I could understand why a lot of people don’t think so.

    • I probably should have prefaced the article, but it’s kind of limited to the scope of the website, which is pop/rock music. Sinatra kind of falls outside of that.

  14. I also really enjoy the following voices:

    Gary Lightbody (Snowpatrol)
    Ben Gibbard (Death Cab/Postal Service)
    Scott Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit – RIP)

  15. As soon as I read the RS list …. I made a post for my top 10 but it’s in drafts and I’ll probably delete it…but I like yours way more than RS…not counting the female voices of course. I’m not going to publish mine…but I have to admit I agree with them MUCH more on this than their album list which I didn’t agree hardly at all….here was my list minus Aretha Franklin and Joplin. I did agree with them on Franklin for number 1 though.

    Van Morrison
    Freddie Mercury
    Al Green
    John Lennon
    Little Richard
    John Fogerty
    Elvis Presley
    Gregg Allman
    Otis Redding
    Bob Dylan… yea I went there.

    I was happy to see Paul Westerberg in the list.

    • Right.

      But if you (rightfully) disqualify people like Neil Young, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty and Ben Gibbard because they (despite being great composers/musicians) don’t have the vocal range to be at the top of any all-time best vocalist list, then you should also omit Wilson, Presley and Dylan – for the exact same reasons.

      Just because you sell millions of albums doesn’t make you the best vocalist.

      Just my honest opinion. Eg nobody ever mentioned MJ in this blog – as a prime example.

      • Hey Andrew….everytime I make a list on my blog…I always think…should I make it objectively or my personal favorites…my personal favorites always wins out.

        There are two lists we could make. Lets say artistically and objectively is one… no Dylan shouldn’t be on there….Bing Crosby, Pavarotti, and other singers would be.

        Now the other list would be artists I listen to and would rather hear sing. Micheal Bolton has a good voice…but I don’t want to hear it…and no offense to Bolton. I like imperfections in voices that make them unique. Now influence is factored in also I believe…selling millions goes hand in hand with influence…but there are a lot of bands that didn’t sell a lot but I like…Paul Westerberg is a prime example. He would make my top 20 but he wouldn’t win any voice of the year award.

        I do like Petty, Dylan, Cash, and Young’s vocals because they sing with feel…more than technique. At least to me anyway….thats just a personal opinion.

        I was surprised that Jackson wasn’t on any comments list.

        • I think my lists are often a bit of a mix between subjective and objective. I think it’s pretty hard to be totally objective as a committee of one.

          Westerberg scraped onto the Rolling Stone list.

          • When I make my lists…I did add people I don’t normally listen to as much but I knew they belonged.

            Yea I think 196 or something but I wasn’t expecting it.

          • I don’t normally add people who I just don’t listen to or care about. I’m a little conflicted about Mariah Carey for the female list – I like her music a lot more than Celine Dion but unsure if she quite belongs on a list on this site.

      • I meant to put Jackson on my list of unlucky misses, actually. Prince is very good too.

        Carl Wilson has a 3.5 octave range and a beautiful pure tone. He was only 15 or something when the band started, so he mainly sings lead on later songs like ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘I Can Hear Music’.

    • You could easily make a top ten just with 1960s and 1970s R&B/soul guys – Rolling Stone’s was pretty close to that. Sam Cooke and Otis Redding are both great but couldn’t fit them.

      • I have this discussion about sports also…I think it might be more honest to break it down by decades and their peers.

  16. Funny, I was thinking about Pavarotti when one of the contributors above mentioned Sinatra.

    As G said, you have to have a finite universe to work with. Even with that (rock and pop – so no Sinatra or Pavarotti) , it’s an impossibly big universe.

    You could do it by decade and/or by country etc to make it more manageable

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Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person. It features album reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.

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Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.

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