The late, legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar is included in the respected American newspaper Rolling Stone’s list of the 200 Best singers of all time. She placed 84th on the list, which also features late Pakistani vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Lee Ji-eun, a South Korean singer-songwriter, and Jungkook from the well-known South Korean band BTS.
The magazine wrote of Lata Mangeshkar: “The crystalline, the always 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-synch in expensive movie musicals. It’s been estimated that she recorded over 7,000 of these songs.”
The Lata Mangeshkar song catalog has influenced music 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).
The late American singer Aretha Franklin came in first, then Whitney Houston, then Sam Cook. Billie Holiday, Mariah Carey, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Otis Redding, and Al Green round out the top ten performers.
The list also includes performers like Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift, Bono, Amy Winehouse, Bruce Springsteen, and Billie Eilish.
