Greatest musicians (all time)

Jean-Philippe Rameau (25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764) was a French composer and music theorist of the Baroque era. Little is known about Rameau's early years, and it was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theor...

Henry Purcell (10 September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. No ot...

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer.

Samuel Roy "Sammy" Hagar (born October 13, 1947), also known as The Red Rocker, is an American rock vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and musician. Hagar came to prominence in the 1970s with the hard rock band Montrose. He afterward...

Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), better known by his stage names The Notorious B.I.G, Biggie, or Biggie Smalls, was an American rapper...

Victor "Vic" Stefan Vogel, (born August 3, 1935) is a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, trombonist and conductor in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

William Byrd (birth date variously given as c.1539/40 or 1543 – 14 July 1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular...

Brian Hugh Warner (born January 5, 1969), known professionally as Marilyn Manson, is an American musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor, painter, multimedia artist, and former music journalist. He is known for his cont...

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. Houston is one of pop music's best-selling music artists of all-time, with an estimated 170–200 million records s...

Timothy Zachery "Timbaland" Mosley (born March 10, 1972) is an American rapper, record producer, and songwriter. Timbaland's first full credit production work was in 1996 on Ginuwine...the Bachelor for R&B singer Ginuwine. After f...

Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English musician, composer, singer, songwriter, and painter. Best known as a founder member of the band Pink Floyd, Barrett was the lead singer, guitarist and princip...

William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth-best-selling recording artist and the thir...

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (Russian: Серге́й Васи́льевич Рахма́нинов; 1 April 1873 – 28 March 1943), was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff was one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Rus...

Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, better known by his stage name Earl Sweatshirt, is an American rapper-producer and former member of the Los Angeles-based hip hop collective Odd Future. He is signed to Columbia Records, as well as his own...

Iggy Pop (born James Newell Osterberg, Jr.; April 21, 1947) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actor. He is the vocalist of influential proto-punk band The Stooges, who reunited in 2003, and has been known for his outr...

Michael Andrew "Duff" McKagan (born February 5, 1964) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and author. He is best known for his twelve-year tenure as the bassist of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved wo...

Béla Viktor János Bartók (March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer and pianist. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later beca...

Ralph Vaughan Williams (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written...

Carly Rae Jepsen (born November 21, 1985) is a Canadian singer and songwriter from Mission, British Columbia currently based in Vancouver. In 2007, she placed third in Canadian Idol season five's competition. Jepsen independently...

Alan Anthony Silvestri (born March 26, 1950) is an American composer and conductor who works primarily in film and television. He is known inter alia for his frequent collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis, including composin...

Eddie Vedder (born Edward Louis Severson December 23, 1964) is an American musician who is best known for being the lead vocalist and one of three guitarists of the grunge band Pearl Jam...

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский; 21 March 1839 – 28 March 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove...

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic/acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later a...

Michael "Mike" David McCready (born April 5, 1966) is an American musician who serves as the lead guitarist for the American rock band Pearl Jam. Along with Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Eddie Vedder, he is one of the founding mem...

Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi, born January 17, 1952) (Japanese pronunciation: [sakamoto ɽju͍ːitɕi]) is a Japanese musician, activist, composer, record producer, writer, singer, pianist, and actor based in Tokyo and New...

Randall William "Randy" Rhoads (December 6, 1956 – March 19, 1982) was an American heavy metal guitarist who played with Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot. He died in a plane accident while on tour with Osbourne in Florida in 1982...

William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel (born 31 May 1955) is an Australian virtuoso guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer, best known for his complex fingerstyle technique, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects o...

Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer and musician. Franklin began her career singing gospel at her father, minister C. L. Franklin's church as a child. In 1960, at the age of 18, Franklin embarked on...

Marvin Gaye ( born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984 ) was an American soul singer, songwriter, and musician. Gaye helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as...

George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. In 1965, he co-founded the progressive rock band Pink Floyd with drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Richard Wright and...

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and occasional actor whose career spans five decades.

Takahiro "Tak" Matsumoto (born on March 27, 1961 in Toyonaka, Osaka) is a Grammy Award-winning Japanese guitarist, producer, arranger, composer, singer and songwriter. In addition to being the guitarist and lead composer for the h...

Michael Peter Balzary (born October 16, 1962), better known by his stage name Flea, is an Australian-born American musician and occasional actor. He is best known as the bassist, co-founding member, and one of the composers of the...

Angus McKinnon Young (born 31 March 1955) is a Scottish-born Australian guitarist best known as a co-founder, lead guitarist, and songwriter of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC.

Brian Johnson (born 5 October 1947) is an English singer and songwriter. Since 1980, he has been the lead singer of the Australian rock band AC/DC, with whom he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003...

Harry Gregson-Williams (born 13 December 1961) is a British composer, orchestrator, conductor, and music producer. He has regularly written for television and films, such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wa...

Jack White (born John Anthony Gillis; July 9, 1975) is an American musician, record producer, and occasional actor.

Kirk Lee Hammett (born November 18, 1962) is the lead guitarist and songwriter for the heavy metal band Metallica and has been a member of the band since 1983. Before joining Metallica he formed and named the band Exodus...

Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English musician, singer and songwriter, actor, and one of the original members of the rock band The Rolling Stones.

Geddy Lee Weinrib (born Gary Lee Weinrib, July 29, 1953), OC, known professionally as Geddy Lee, is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group...

Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Salome; his...

Anton Bruckner (4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896) was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets.

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian: Никола́й Андре́евич Ри́мский-Ко́рсаков; 18 March 1844 – 21 June 1908) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration...

Scott Richard Weiland (né Kline; October 27, 1967 – December 3, 2015) was an American musician and singer-songwriter. During a career spanning three decades, Weiland was best known as the lead singer for the successful rock band S...

Shania Twain (born Eilleen Regina Edwards; August 28, 1965) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Twain has sold over 85 million records, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. She is also the best selling...

Tijs Michiel Verwest (born 17 January 1969), better known by his stage name Tiësto, is a Dutch DJ and record producer. In 1997 he founded the label Black Hole Recordings with Arny Bink, where he released the Magik and In Search of...

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition.

Jason Curtis Newsted (born March 4, 1963) is an American metal musician, known for playing bass guitar with the bands Metallica (in which he did occasional lead vocals), Voivod and Flotsam and Jetsam. Joining Metallica in 1986 aft...

Daniel Pemberton (born 3 November 1977) is an English Ivor Novello winning and multi BAFTA nominated composer.

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (15 May 1567 (baptized) – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, singer and Roman Catholic priest. Monteverdi's work marked the change from the Renaissance style of music to that of...