Lead singers: It’s almost a quaint topic to debate in 2023. These days, huge bands are increasingly rare, and many of the most important rock outfits are primarily the vision of one individual — with the backing band either inconsistent from project to project, or in some cases non-existent. But for the great majority of rock and roll history, the lead singer was more of a quarterback: Just one player on the team, but the one most responsible for calling the plays, for setting the tone and for generally putting numbers on the board. And also the one most likely to end up a superstar, an MVP or all all-time icon.
Here at Billboard, we’re taking a moment to honor those front-of-stage greats: The rock and roll singers who elevated their bands to stratospheric heights, and inspired entire generations of vocalists to follow in the paths they blazed. These are the most legendary avatars from rock’s seven-decade history, the folks who — with their singing, with their songwriting, with their ineffable live charisma and particularly with their undefinable, all-encompassing presence — have done the greatest job of spreading the music’s gospel to all corners of the world, serving as mouthpieces for their bands and spokespeople for the genre.
In assembling our list, we allowed that some bands could have multiple frontpeople considered lead singers, though we only ended up including one per group. But we were picky about the “band” part — groups had to be mostly consistent from one album to the next and play the majority of their own instruments — as well as the “rock” part; while many of the groups here span (and/or defy) genres, we had to be comfortable considering them largely a rock band for them to count here. And most challengingly, we opted to disqualify lead singers whose most famous bands are named after them — Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Joan Jett — because it made the lines between solo artist and band too blurry, and because we’d prefer to use this list to focus on the bands that were more democratically assembled, but whose frontpeople still led the way in singular fashion.
With all that in mind, here are our picks for the 50 greatest lead singers in rock history. Grab a microphone, some hair product and a feather boa or two and get ready to sing and preen along.
