Thursday, November 20, 2008

100 Greatest Singers of All Time: Part 4


Bono
I would describe Bono's singing as 50 percent Guinness, 10 percent cigarettes — and the rest is religion. He's a physical singer, like the leader of a gospel choir, and he gets lost in the melodic moment. He goes to a place outside himself, especially in front of an audience, when he hits those high notes.
-Billie Joe Armstrong

Whitney Houston
Her voice is a mammoth, coruscating cry: Few vocalists could get away with opening a song with 45 unaccompanied seconds of singing, but Houston's powerhouse version of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" is a tour de force.

Bruce Springsteen
"He finds the emotional drama in the characters in his songs," says Melissa Etheridge. "When he sings 'The River,' he's going to break your heart." When Bono inducted Springsteen into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, he said Springsteen's voice sounded as "if Van Morrison could ride a Harley-Davidson."

Elton John
John Lennon once told Rolling Stone that when he heard Elton John singing "Your Song" — the 1970 breakthrough ballad that spotlighted John's voice and its union of rock & roll grandness with deep soul feeling — he thought, "Great, that's the first new thing that's happened since we happened."

Jeff Buckley
You can talk all day about technical aspects, and you get nowhere. Jeff had the ability to sing a cappella in almost a whisper in a packed club environment and be able to hear a pin drop — that's not about technical ability, that's something else.
-Chris Cornell

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