the fact that Lou Reed is on the list at all confirms that this is not a list of great singers but great rock & soul personas.
I totally agree -- I feel the same about Dylan. I bow to no one in my admiration of him as a poet and artist, but he's NOT one of the top ten singers.
ETA: for that matter, I don't consider Sly Stone a great singer either.
Agreed on all points here too. I have a feeling they really only seriously consider the priority of the the first ten listees, maybe 20 at most. After that they throw a whole bunch of names into a hopper, and the first 80 or 90 that are drawn make the list in exactly that order.
But as with most of these kinds of lists, they probably start more arguments than they resolve. And they probably sell a fair number of magazines.
One interesting thing I noted: One of the contributors to this piece is Austin Scaggs, son of Boz and Carmella, who is now an Associate Editor with RS.
(I took the opportunity of being on the RS website to poke around a little. Was surprised by how many familiar names from the 70s are still on the masthead: Kurt Loder, Anthony DeCurtis, Jonathan Cott, Greil Marcus, Charles Perry, David Fricke (who'll probably die there), and Ralph Steadman (gardening) and Raoul Duke (sports), too.)
