Play | The Rhapsody Editorial Music Blog

Ten Singers Who Should've Made the Rolling Stone List

Rolling Stone recently ranked its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. The list is packed with legendary artists, plus features a handful of celebrity columnists gushing over their fave crooners (Billy Joel on Ray Charles: “He was the minister and I was the congregation”). As with any all-time-greatest list, it’s also riddled with questionable choices and glaring omissions – at least that’s how I see it. With help from Rhapsody Pop Editor Rachel Devitt, I’ve compiled 10 artists who could and should be included in any serious conversation about great singers. Some are obvious, many obscure and a few will have you muttering, “What the … ?”

Have a read as we stoke further controversy!

Q&A: Matthew Dear

by Justin Farrar

To declare Matthew Dear this generation’s Brian Eno just begs for angry responses from incredulous readers. But there’s some truth to the idea, however controversial. Like Eno, one of his heroes, Dear blurs the lines between electronic music and avant rock, experimenting with just about everything under the sun. When using his Audion moniker, he unleashes minimal techno that as relentlessly crushing as a meat mincer – crank the Suckfish collection for the neighbors sometime. As just Matthew Dear, meanwhile, he has blossomed into one of indie pop’s most unique voices. 

The Return of Indie Rock

by Justin Farrar

These days, many music scribes and Hollywood starlets such as Natalie Portman toss around the word “indie” to describe just about any band that’s not OneRepublic. The Shins are "indie." So is Interpol, Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, The National, Bright Eyes and Rilo Kiley. Even alt-blah groups like the Killers and Silversun Pickups are sometimes thrown into the kettle. And while several of these groups have their roots in mid-’90s indie America, the big-time pop tunes they produce in 2008 have been washed clean of the music’s original idiosyncrasies. The National, for example, share more in common with Pat Monahan and James Blunt than they do with Pavement and Sebadoh (circa 1992). Back then, when Papa Bush passed the reigns of the enslaved world over to Clinton 1.0, an indie band could sound like anything, from fey bubblegum to virile acid-punk, just so long as they were unprofessional, exquisitely damaged and lo-fi.