I think this is my third post on “list ethics.” My first was in 2011, reviewing a sloppy, careless list called “The Fifty Most Unforgivable Acts in Baseball History.” The second was in 2020, about a list called “The 25 Greatest Actors Of The 21st Century (So Far).” The list I’m writing about this time is even worse than those two; in fact, it’s unforgivable.
I get it: lists are clickbait and exist so people can argue over them. They almost always have a gimmick: if you make a list of the greatest rock and pop groups of all time, you can’t have The Beatles as #1, because any idiot could decide that. You pick “The Zombies” or “Heart.” Bill James, the baseball stats pioneer, wrote a book ranking the greatest baseball players at each position. Everyone knows that Ted Williams gets #1 in left field, but Bill picked Stan Musial. It’s cynical and dishonest, but lists are arbitrary and meaningless anyway.
I read lots of them and my eyes hurt from rolling. I only get seriously critical when a list covers something I know a lot about. Baseball history and acting history are in that category, and so is popular music history. What I wrote about the baseball list in 2011 applies with even greater force to “The 100 Best Vocalists of All Time” compiled by Consequence, a website I never heard of and based on this effort, will never visit again. I wrote (I’m substituting the topic of the list at issue today):
“If you are going to write about history, there is a duty to perform diligent research, even for a silly online list. Misrepresentations online have a large probability of misleading people. The list isn’t close to complete; it isn’t consistent; it isn’t well-researched.. Anyone who looked at the list and assumed that these are [the best vocalists of all time] would be seriously misinformed.”
The list is introduced by this description of its methodology, and its flaw becomes clear. “To generate our list of the top 100 vocalists of all time,” it says, “we polled over 50 musicians, including Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of ’26er Steve Stevens, rising stars like Samia, Blondshell, and Kneecap, and established icons Randy Blythe, Mike Patton, and Linda Perry, plus many more. After we assembled the surveys into the spine of the list, our staff chimed in with more picks, mostly historical, to round things out. The final ranking is a curated perspective on the hundreds of names that were nominated.”
Ethics Alarms 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbVaSC6U0gI
Would Johnny Hartman make your list?
PWS
Of course! I didn’t dive into the jazz singers omitted who were obviously deserving. Hartman is an obvious one. It’s amazing how many black artists were just ignored because the “experts” never heard them. Rhythm and Blues vocalists are slighted. Where’s Louis Armstrong? Mel Torme? (I know he’s not black.) Paul Robson is a legendary black singer who introduced “Old Man River,” arguably the greatest song to ever come out of Broadway. Bobby Hatfield, who has the most remembered and sold version of “Unchained Melody,” and his “Righteous Brothers” partner Bill Medley are snubbed. Bobby Darin, a personal favorite. Marty Robbins. Vic Damone. Al Martino. Scorcese’s muse, Jerry Vale. British pop singers are on the list, so foreign vocalists were considered: where’s Edith Piaf? Charles Trenet?
Jeepers, Jack, I’m starting to think you’d be hard pressed to keep it @100…
Anywho, I’ve always had a soft spot for Gary Puckett’s poignant tenor.
Young Girl was a monster hit in 1967 when I met my first real girlfriend; I was was 12 and she was 11.
We’re still in touch.
PWS
Gary would make my list. Great voice. Also the original Jay of “Jay and the Americans.”
Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Bonnie Raitt? Like I said, just 100 is a tall order!
PWS
Paul Graham, an internet entrepreneur who writes essays in his spare time, has a marvelous essay about “The List of N Things.”
https://paulgraham.com/nthings.html
Thanks for letting me share
charles w abbott
rochester NY
I suppose the Top 100 list is taxonomically distinct from the List of N Things. The Top 100 List is ostensibly ranked in order of importance or significance or value. Often in clickbait environments we are fed items one-by-one in countdown fashion, almost like it’s Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty and we are waiting for Number One.
But note the basis of ranking: it is in part subjective. In the Top 100 list cited by Jack Marshall the ranking is subjective and based (within some limit of plausibility) on the author’s tastes. We’re not ranking baseball players by home runs or bases stolen, using numbers that are generated by some objective process (sales, sports games).
The increased number of such essays probably reflects the need for clickbait or inches of copy in a publication.
–charles w abbott
Frank Zappa once said (paraphrased) that music journalism consists of ‘people who cant write, describing people who cant sing, for people who cant read’
That’s up there with Hunter S. Thompson:
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side”
–Hunter S. Thompson
Thanks for coming out to play!
–charles w abbott