3. Brody Dalle
I won’t go into Brody Dalle’s messy personal life here. You can find accounts of it easily enough. Suffice it to say that when she was fronting The Distillers, she had among the most authentic rock and roll voices ever put on record.
She was like Joan Jett – another singer who could have been here, only with even more attitude. If that sounds impossible, give a listen to “City of Angels” or anything from the final Distillers album, Coral Fang.
2. Ann Wilson
You couldn’t build a better pop-rock singer than Ann Wilson if you went into a lab with ChatGPT and AI and all the modern miracle-working tech I will never understand. Singing decade after decade with her sister Nancy in their band Heart, Wilson could go soft and lyrical (“Dog and Butterfly”) or big and powerful (“Crazy on You”).
The fantastic thing about lists like this is that Billboard had her slotted somewhere around number 30, trailing singers like Lou Reed and Jim Morrison. They may have been rock gods for other reasons, but there’s no way that they were better vocalists than Ann Wilson.
1. Janis Joplin
I realize this could be a matter of my age, but to my ears, Janis Joplin is the greatest rock and roll singer ever, male or female. There are a couple of men who I would put close to her. Amongst women, she is unrivalled. The only real argument against putting her first is that her career was very short. That didn’t stop Billboard from ranking Kurt Cobain fifth on their list, while Joplin came in around 25.
She was at her best belting out blues-tinged rock, but there was nothing she couldn’t sing. “Move Over” is seminal rock and roll. “Down on Me” may be even better. “Summertime” is a tour de force. And you’d be hard pressed to find a better single vocal performance than Joplin gives you on “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Oh, and to tie up a loose end from the intro -- Tommy Hall, of the 13th Floor Elevators, was the most significant electric jug player of all time, even if he has largely disassociated himself from those days.