The late iconic vocalist Lata Mangeshkar is listed among the 200 greatest singers of all time in the prestigious American publication Rolling Stone. She took the 84th rank on the list, which also includes South Korean singer-songwriter Lee Ji-eun, late Pakistani vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Jungkook from the well-known South Korean band BTS.
The magazine said of Lata, “The crystalline, endlessly girlish voice of ‘the Melody Queen,’ is a cornerstone of Indian pop music, with a global influence disseminated through Bollywood films, whose golden era she defined. Lata was the empress of playback singers, the vocal wizards who deliver songs for actors to lip-sync in expensive movie musicals. It’s been estimated that she recorded over 7,000 of these songs.
It continued, “Even Asha Bhosle, her younger sister and the only other playback singer who could be considered a true peer, considered ‘Lata Didi’ her ‘favourite singer’ — and even though Bhosle was more adaptable and prolific, her elder sister remained the gold standard for the piercing brilliance of her tone. 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 centrepiece of his 2015 Morning Side), the Lata Mangeshkar songbook has influenced music far beyond Bollywood.
Aretha Franklin, a late American singer, was ranked first, followed by Whitney Houston and Sam Cook. The top 10 slots are filled by the following artists: Billie Holiday, Mariah Carey, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Otis Redding, and Al Green.
The magazine said of the late Pakistani vocal master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, an icon in the world of Qawwali, a type of Sufi devotional song, whose family’s musical legacy went back hundreds of years, “Watching archival performances of the late Pakistani vocal master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — an icon in the realm of Qawwali, a type of Sufi devotional song whose family’s musical legacy stretched back hundreds of years Madonna, Eddie Vedder, who collaborated with him on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, and Jeff Buckley, who referred to the musician as “my Elvis” and studied Urdu in order to properly cover him, were just a few of his many well-known admirers.
The list also includes names such as Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Bono, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, João Gilberto and Billie Eilish, among others.
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