Late legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar has featured at the 84th spot in renowned American magazine Rolling Stone’s 200 Best Singers of All Time. The late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is also a part of the list. South Korean singer-songwriter Lee Ji-eun, better known by her stage name IU, also stars on the list, along with BTS’ youngest singer Jungkook.
Talking about Lata, the magazine wrote, “The crystalline, eternally girlish voice of ‘the Melody Queen’ is a cornerstone of Indian pop music, with a global influence spread via Bollywood films, whose golden era she defined. Lata was the empress of playback singers, the vocal magicians who perform songs for actors to lip-sync in lavish movie musicals, recording over 7,000 such songs, by some estimates.”
It further read, “Even Asha Bhosle, her younger sister and only true peer among playbackers, considered ‘Lata Didi’ her ‘favorite singer’ — and if Bhosle was more versatile and prolific, her elder sister remained the gold standard for the piercing brilliance of her tone. The Lata Mangeshkar songbook has informed songs far beyond Bollywood, from Britney Spears’ Toxic (which sampled the 1981 Lata duet Tere Mere Beech Mein) to electronic jams by Madlib and Four Tet (who made a section of Lata’s exquisite Main Teri Chhoti Bahna Hoon the centerpiece of his 2015 Morning Side.”
Singer Celine Dion has been excluded from the list. Reacting to Celine Dion’s exclusion from the list, a fan took to Twitter to write, “You can’t have a greatest singers list without Celine Dion. She’s one of the greatest vocalists of our generation. Need I remind you.” Another user wrote, “I want the entire Rolling Stone Top 200 Greatest Singers article deleted IMMEDIATELY. How do you have Michael Jackson at 86, Amy Whinehouse at 83, and Celine Dion not on the list?!?” A tweet read, “Her voice is revered in the same breath as Mariah and Whitney, so I do not understand it!”
The top 20 artists in the list are–1. Aretha Franklin, 2. Whitney Houston, 3. Sam Cooke, 4. Billie Holiday, 5. Mariah Carey, 6. Ray Charles, 7. Stevie Wonder, 8. Beyonce, 9. Otis Redding, 10. Al Green, 11. Little Richard, 12. John Lennon, 13. Patsy Cline, 14. Freddie Mercury, 15. Bob Dylan, 16. Prince, 17. Elvis Presley, 18. Celia Cruz, 19. Frank Sinatra and 20. Marvin Gaye.
Some of the other famous singers on the list include–Adele (22), Paul McCartney (26), David Bowie (32), Louis Armstrong (39), Ariana Grande (43), Lady Gaga (58), Rihanna (68), Amy Winehouse (83), Michael Jackson (86), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (91), Bob Marley (98), Elton John (100), Taylor Swift (102), Ozzy Osbourne (112), Neil Young (133), IU (135), Bono (140), Christina Aguilera (141), Barbra Streisand (147), Jungkook (191) and Billie Eilish (198).
Lata Mangeshkar died in February 2022 at the age of 92. She sang many songs in her career and recorded them in over 36 languages.