OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE. ANOTHER BEST-OF LIST? ANOTHER “GREATEST SINGER OF ALL TIME” POLL? ANOTHER ROCK HALL INDUCTEE THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN IN TWENTY YEARS AGO WHILE SOME GENIUS ROTS IN THE “SNUBBED” SECTION?
Let us—the fans of Streisand, Minnelli, Gino Vanelli, Mina, Mel Tormé, Ella, Kurt Elling, Led Zeppelin, Chaka Khan, Claus Ogerman, Quincy Jones, Vince Mendoza, Pat Metheny, and our literal mother Caterina Valente—let us explain something to the internet’s collective single brain cell:
YOU ARE BEING UTTERLY, HISTORICALLY, CATASTROPHICALLY STUPID.
You want to rank these people? Rank them? On what scale, you absolute walnut?
Technique? Cleo Laine whistle-registers circles around 99% of your precious list, but Barbra went off-key on purpose sometimes because she’s searching for something, you heathen.
Acting-through-song? Early Minnelli was so emotionally naked it makes Streisand’s Funny Girl look like a polite rehearsal.
Scatting? Caterina Valente did Paganini’s Moto Perpetuo in three voices on live television while you were struggling to clap on beat 2 and 4.
And then you have the audacity—the AUDACITY—to throw Ella, Carmen McRae, Shirley Horn, Sarah Vaughan, Dianne Reeves, Janis Siegel, Kurt Elling, Sara Gazarek, and Cecilia Bartoli into the same blender and ask “who’s best”?
They are not in competition, you absolute donkey. They are in CONVERSATION.
Every single one of them is original. Every single one took their flaws, their obsessions, their neuroses, their joy, and their pain, and built a universe out of it. That’s the job. That’s the art. Not to win your little gold-plastered trophy or your “Top 10 Vocalists You Should Know Before You Die” slideshow with 15 ads per click.
So here’s your sarcastic-aggressive answer to the entire “greatest of all time” industrial complex:
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? A popularity contest in a nursing home for classic rock nostalgia.
The Grammys? A corporate handshake dressed up as a gown.
Every single “Best Singer Ever” online poll? A toddler’s pissing contest measured in streaming numbers and dead parents’ vinyl collections.
You want the real list?
There is no real list.
There are only teachers. And we are terrible pupils, because we keep arguing about who was the best teacher instead of shutting up and learning.
So stop. Stop the lists. Stop the rankings. Stop the Halls. Stop the awards.
They disrespect the profession. They disrespect the dead. And they disrespect the living geniuses still out there, like Kurt Elling and Dianne Reeves, who don’t need your bronze dick-measuring statue to validate one goddamn note.
Now go listen to Mina sing “Bugiardo e incosciente” and weep. Then listen to Chaka Khan tear through “What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me” and apologize to your ears for ever doubting. Then listen to Caterina Valente out-scat every jazz bro who ever lived—on a variety show in 1964—and realize:
You don’t rank the sun. You don’t rank the moon. You don’t rank a supernova. So why the fuck are you ranking them?
Respectfully (not respectfully at all),
a professional who is exhausted by your bullshit.
