Whitney Houston belongs towards the top as well.
. . . Maria Callas, "There's no one in her league. That's it. Period."
In addition, I'd vote for Adele, Aretha, Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin, Karen Carpenter, Ann Wilson, Judy Garland, and Julie Andrews as my greatest of all time. Lady Gaga probably raises some eyebrows, but she is making a quite a claim to being one of the greatest of all time as she continues to kill it in multiple different genres.
The MacKenzie brothers attended ND, and were very interesting and intelligent young men.
John and Lou, with Lou being older and a Classics scholar.
John - well, I'm not sure what he major was. Maybe he was like so many of the rest of us and floundering a bit.
He found himself in a downtown bar or whatever it was called and ordered himself a drink. There was an attractive young woman by herself, so John went over and introduced himself and asked if he could sit with her. She smiled, said yes and they proceeded to get along famously.
I can't remember if John bought her a drink or not.
After about 45 minutes, a guy got up onstage and said that he was honored to introduce "The Stone Poneys" who had the big hit, "Different Drum."
John recognized the song but was nonplussed when the attractive young lady he had been talking to politely excused herself, walked up onto the stage and belted out the song.
He told us later, "I was hanging out with Linda Ronstadt and didn't know it."
Typical ND guy. Great memory for John.
Eva Cassidy
Cher
Julie Andrews
Tina Turner
Etta James
Not arguing any of these are the best (how do you quantify that?), just that I haven't seen them mentioned
Also Cyndi Lauper was reported to have a 4 octave vocal range
voice for concerts. Shockingly powerful for someone so petite.
My kindergarten granddaughter.
Sue me, I think they have beautiful voices.
right after cancer surgery hospitalization. I took my nurse to the show. Both she and Linda were scalding hot.
Linda had a great voice, but I'm not sure it was better than Karen Carpenter's.
Linda is an archetype of a certain type of singer: she doesn't write music, she doesn't write lyrics, she doesn't arrange, she doesn't play an instrument, she doesn't dance. All she does is sing.
has pieces of Linda Ronstadt in her stool.
I wouldn't put her in the top 50
so that her kids didn't starve.
two times.
Lauryn Hill’s vocals were excellent as usual. Your adherence to U2 and only U2 blinds you to lots of talented musicians. But hey, I liked The Joshua Tree, too.
For it. Yes, i know Wyclef contributed those inspired backing vocals. Not sure how you drew an inference to the contrary. I do think she is terrible. More because of her curious manner of singing "boy" so as to sound like wass when he is barfing up fur ball.
Buwaya.
were to make fun of others' taste in music. I'm not sure what the point of that was.
There are a lot of great singers in this thread. I would have listed Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, and several of the others here. You don't have to listen to their music, but their vocal abilities are undeniable. Do you happen to have any suggestions?
...A very wide range of pitch, timbre, and emotion delivered with memorable impact.
I guess Faustina Bordoni won't be on anyone's list today, but she had a great run in the 18th century.
There are all kinds of great female voices in recent times across all genres. Here are a couple in the classical mode, one chosen for the season, and one because you may have heard the tune in a current car commercial.
1. "September," from Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) by Richard Strauss, who wrote them in 1948 at age 82. The poem is by Hermann Hesse. Here is the text as used by Strauss with my literalistic translation, which will sound a bit like Yoda speaking:
Der Garten trauert,
kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
still seinem Ende entgegen.
Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.
Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
in den sterbenden Gartentraum.
Lange noch bei den Rosen
bleibt er stehen, sehnt sich nach Ruh.
Langsam tut er die müdgewordnen Augen zu.
(The garden mourns,
Coolly sinks into the flowers the rain.
The summer shivers
quietly its end against.
Golden drop leaf upon leaf,
down from the high acacia tree.
Summer smiles astonished and wan
in the dying garden dream.
Long still by the roses,
remains it standing [ugh--stehenbleiben is best translated "stay a while" here], longs it for peace.
Slowly puts it the weary-become eyes to [slowly it closes its weary eyes. German throws the prefixes of separable verbs, in their finite forms, to the end. Shows up in English in phrase like "Are you taking these out?" where the verb is "to take out" but in German would be as if it were "outtaken"].
Sung by Lisa Della Casa, a great singer (RIP), with the Vienna Phil flying at tempos quicker than the versions by Schwatzkopf, Flagsted, et al. but supposedly in line with what Strauss wanted.
2. "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("The wrath of hell cooks in my heart"), Mozart, from The Magic Flute. Volvo uses this in a sweet, soft rendition that is completely contrary to the emotion of the text. Here it is in English:
Hell's vengeance boils in my heart;
Death and despair blaze around me!
If Sarastro does not feel the pain of death because of you,
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.
Disowned be forever,
Forsaken be forever,
Shattered be forever
All the bonds of nature
If Sarastro does not turn pale [in death] because of you!
Hear, gods of vengeance, hear the mother's oath!
Sung by Patricia Petibon, a French soprano, here in a rehearsal.
Singing something like this takes tremendous physical exertion and contortions of the head, neck, and really your whole body in order to make sounds that resemble music...kind of like putting together a good golf swing, I guess.
I kid.
...I mean, what would be so odd about a family with a pro football player and an opera singer? We already have the Bayless brothers (Rick the chef and Skip the sports pundit).
or a medical dictionary or stereo instructions or whatever else she chose to sing to me.
"Midnight Train to Georgia" is a masterpiece of a song.
And Nancy sure can make that guitar sing as well
Love Linda Ronstadt, too. You’re No Good is pure gold.
Then watch some crap tv.
Pretty sure you're not going to find any of them on my playlist.
But it's okay to recognize talent.
and sing it in your honor, of course.
Lou Holtz.
I would rip up.
She ripped up the Pope, it wasn’t Farrakhan
voice that was very pretty.
Karen Carpenter's voice was amazingly powerful and soothing at the same time. Probably the most recognizable voice.
If only Mama Cass had given her ham sandwich to Karen...
Whitney Houston and Aretha deserve consideration. I suppose you need to categorize, i.e., pop, jazz, opera. I've seen Maria Callas ranked #1 among all comers. Some might propose Ella Fitzgerald.
I think if your version of "Tracks of my Tears" is better than Smokey Robinson's, you deserve some kind of prize.
Billie Holiday? Any of the Andrews Sisters? Cher? Carrie Underwood? Patsy Cline? Maria Callas? Joplin? Maria McKee? Dusty Springfield? Rosemary Clooney?
I don’t get the fawning over Ronstadt: to me she sounds completely adequate and fine, common like the female lead in your high school’s musical play. I listened intensely to the supposedly mythical live concert in Hollywood from her peak they just released: she’s flat in places, and sounds completely commonplace. I will say, however, that some of the songs are fantastic: they remind me of growing up in the 70’s.
I'm not sure you'd call it soul, but there was a lot inside of her that would come out when she sang.
Blue-eyed soul, a la Dusty Springfield. Fantastic records.
They couldn't get the rights to her story or music.