20 greatest female rock and roll singers of all time

7. Lzzy Hale

Lzzy Hale is a flat-out brilliant rock singer. She could be first on this list, and the fact that she isn’t just means that many great female rock singers are out there. “I Miss the Misery” is simply one of this century's excellent power rock ballads.

And it represents almost all her work with her band Halestorm over the past 15 years. Their first self-titled album was pretty good. From 2012’s The Strange Case Of…, Hale has been belting out great rock and roll.

6. Wanda Jackson

Jackson was around at the birth of rock and roll. In the same way that Al Green bounced between soul and gospel, Jackson was also split between songs of devotion and songs of raucous party animal rock and roll. We’ll conveniently ignore the gospel albums, even though they have plenty of value. As a rocker, Jackson helped invent modern delivery.

She modelled her singing on pioneers like Elvis and Buddy Holly but added her own powerhouse attitude that other female vocalists didn’t match for decades. One listen to “Let’s Have a Party” or “Fujiyama Mama” will convince you that this is one of the seminal voices of rock and roll.

5. Linda Ronstadt

Ronstadt went from being a sweet-voiced teen on “Different Drum” to the equally sweet country of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” Then she began to branch out in the early 1970s before taking the music world by storm in 1974 with Heart Like a Wheel. Her apocalyptic take on “You’re No Good” announced a unique voice in rock balladry.

“When Will I Be Loved” showed she could belt out country-tinged rock with the best of them. She continued for the rest of the decade with hits like “It’s So Easy” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.” She got dinged by the serious rock press because she didn’t write her own music. She just sang those songs better than just about anyone.

4. Grace Slick

Grace Slick was the greatest woman to sing psychedelic rock and roll. When she joined Jefferson Airplane in the late ‘60s, it gave the genre a brand new vibe. She could belt out “Somebody to Love” or lend her potent sense of drama to “White Rabbit” and “Lather.”

All the women on this list were lead singers, but in a band like Airplane, Slick occasionally sang harmony with Marty Balin, as on the blistering “Volunteers.”

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