All of you know a crooner. Not everyone can sing, but everyone knows someone who can kind of sing on key. Chances are this person can sing along on the radio pretty well with famous mike fiends ranging from Sinatra and Paul McCartney to Neil Diamond and Beyonce. However, much better than a good and proper singing voice is one that is distinct, rough around the edges, yet still good. Here is my list of the top 10 voices in the history of rock n’ roll. You won’t find Sinatra or Paul McCartney or Aretha as great as they may be. For me, the best are the most unique. Voices that can not be duplicated or imitated very easily.
10. Joe Cocker
This dude is British and is probably best known for covering the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends” and is therefore just as well known for singing the theme song to “The Wonder Years.” Most of his best-known songs are covers, so he loses points on the creativity side, but that voice is hard to argue with. John Belushi did a damn good impression of him as well.
9. David Bowie
Bowie’s voice is what Frank Sinatra would sound like if he was born 30 years later and was an androgenous lanky space-alien type gent who called himself Ziggy.
8. Mick Jagger
I don’t what it is, but there is something oddly endearing about scrawny white boys from England with big lips trying to sound like old American blues dudes and/or country hicks.
7. John Fogerty
Who doesn’t like Creedence? No one – that’s who. From hipsters to boomers to grandmas to six year olds, CCR will always be a crowd pleaser.
6. Janis Joplin
Janis has the classic gargle-on-gravel type voice few possess, except that woman who works at the DMV, but I doubt she has Janis’ stage presence.
5. Jeff Tweedy
Tweedy, frontman for Wilco, is the youngest person on this list. It doesn’t hurt that he writes amazing songs, but even if he was singing the “Sesame Street” theme song, it would sound pretty bitchin’, as the kids would say.
4. Robert Plant
Anything that needs to be said about Robert Plant has already been said.
3. Bob Seger
Yes that Chevy commercial song kind of sucked, and he was not immune to lameness later in his career, but his early Detroit working-class man records displayed one of the coolest voices ever.
2. Otis Redding
There are a lot of good soul singers. None compare to this guy.
1. Rod Stewart
Even more so than Seger, Stewart has made a ridiculous number of head-scratching career moves throughout his life, but his early stuff with the Faces and his first four solo albums in the 70s are some of the best rock n’ roll ever recorded and show what his voice can do when he is in the right mood. So there it is- Rod “Spandex-wearin’, Blondes have more Fun havin’, D’ya Think I’m Sexy askin’” Stewart is the greatest singer of all time.
