Legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar, who breathed her last on February 6, 2022, at the age of 92, features on the American magazine Rolling Stone’s list of the ‘200 Best Singers of All Time.’
She claimed the 84th spot on the list, which also features artists such as Jungkook from the popular South Korean band BTS, late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, South Korean singer-songwriter Lee Ji-eun, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and others.
The magazine wrote, “The crystalline, eternally girlish voice of ‘the Melody Queen’ is a cornerstone of Indian pop music, with a global influence spread via Bollywood films, whose golden era she defined. Lata was the empress of playback singers, the vocal magicians who perform songs for actors to lip-sync in lavish movie musicals, recording over 7,000 such songs, by some estimates.”
It further read, “Even Asha Bhosle, her younger sister and only true peer among playbackers, considered ‘Lata Didi’ her ‘favorite singer’ — and if Bhosle was more versatile and prolific, her elder sister remained the gold standard for the piercing brilliance of her tone. The Lata Mangeshkar songbook has informed songs 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 centrepiece of his 2015 Morning Side.”
Reacting to the honour, celebrated filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali said, “It is good to know that she has been ranked among the 200 hundred best. But Lataji is not only among the 200 best, she is THE best singer civilization has ever produced.”
Late American singer Aretha Franklin claimed the top spot while the other top 10 artists in the list include Whitney Houston, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday, Mariah Carey, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, and Otis Redding amongst others.
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