Rolling Stone's top 100 singers list

[corianderstem]

Let it go, man. They're never going to recognize your genius.

 

[david]

After reading what Bono wrote about Dylan and his voice I now appreciate it and understand it more.

 

[The Sad Punk]

I'm sure I've told myself before not to get pissed off at music magazine lists, so I'll happily try and ignore this one for the rest of my life.

(LeMel's Axver post was real funny, though).

 

[angelordevil]

After reading what Bono wrote about Dylan and his voice I now appreciate it and understand it more.

Bono did a great job there. I like the part where he mentions how “familiar” Dylan’s voice is. That quality didn’t really hit me until I saw the guy play live. There’s something utterly compelling about him. In the classic sense, his delivery is pretty crap, but if you sit with him through a couple of hours, he’s like a favourite uncle telling stories by the fire—an uncle who just happens to be a genius.

Speaking of genius, the editors of these lists are pretty clever. Nothing gets people in a huff quite like a good list of something. They’re great, precisely because the answer can never be pinned down.

If there was a ranking of the “Top 100 Trees,” we’d get equally varied opinions and replies. (Personally, I’m partial to the White Pine.)

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

I should be at 17. Damn you Rolling Stone!

You'll always be #17 on our list, Zoots

I really liked Bono's short piece about Dylan. He makes a convincing case. I stopped my subscription to Rolling Stone a few years ago and have never really cared one way or another about lists like this, but I especially loved this passage:

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. I have heard him sing versions of "Idiot Wind" where he was definitely the idiot.

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

who the fuck is Howlin' Wolf?

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

who the fuck is Howlin' Wolf?

he's better than Bono, that's all we have to know...

 

[LPU2]

If you think Bob Dylan doesn't belong on the list, then you have to think someone like, say, Barry Manilow, does. There's no other way to look at it.

Manilow can sing circles around Bob Dylan and Tom Waits. Maynard Ferguson could play circles around Mile Davis. And Bob Ross could paint circles around Jackson Pollock.

I don't know about you, but I prefer the latter in every case.

Why is it that every time there's a list like this people forget that music is art.