My top ten favourite male vocalists of all time

On Tuesday, I posted my top ten favourite female vocalists of all time.

All week, I have been thinking about this "male" list and interestingly it has been a much harder list to compile.

I think maybe because I listen to male and female singers in very different ways. I certainly wouldn't compare myself to anyone on my top ten female singers list but if they sing a song in a similar key to me, I do tap into their sound colours and vocal delivery in a way that I just wouldn't if I were listening to a male singer. If nothing else, for me as a singer it is a great learning tool to adapt and recreate sounds and textures that a female singer I revere uses. Often, I can't do this in the same way when listening to a male singer, unless they sing in a register similar to me.

I have also realised that I find it harder to separate out the performer  from the voice when it comes to a male singer and I have no idea why. I had hoped that as I type it would come to me, but no.So here they are, in no particular order:

Tom Waits:

Johnny Cash:

Stevie Wonder:

Freddie Mercury:

Prince:

Michael Jackson:

Otis Redding:

Jeff Buckley:

Bruno Mars: 

Adam Lambert: 

Now this is a pretty formidable list. Amazing, gorgeous voices - with depth, range and richness. But I could pretty much do another list and on it would be: Leonard Cohen, Smokey Robinson, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Chet Baker, Billy Joel, Elvis Presley and Corey Taylor.

I do find this list thing very hard, maybe it is committing it to writing that I find difficult?! Anyway, maybe I'll do a "Part Two" sometime.

You were kind enough to share your thoughts on the female singers list, let me know if you agree with my choices or not. Who would be on your list?

What makes you think of a person as a star?

(Robin WIlliams in Los Angeles on Friday, Aug. 14, 2009. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles))

Nowadays, there are some words that are thrown around all too frequently, in my opinion – legend, icon, and star, even a god, which I heard this morning on the radio about a footballer.

Maybe, I am getting old, but I find this free and easy labelling increasingly irritating. We do live in a world where there is fantastic talent in so many areas of life, but there are degrees - and true stardom, to me, is something quite unusual.

True stars have talent and are excellent at what they do, that’s a given, but there is something more, something intangible, that makes them special.

I don’t believe the majority of true greats decided one day that they were at the pinnacle of their careers; it just became glaringly obvious to everyone else. People, I consider to be stars, as I said have talent of course but it takes time, experience, integrity, persistence, determination and humility. And the people we revere that attain this title share their talents with us unreservedly - it is at their very core and it literally pours out of them.

At the moment, I am thinking particularly about BB King, whom the world lost on Friday. Sadly, I never saw him perform live, but he had such an impact on my musical life. And on hearing of his passing it felt like there was a sombre cloud over many people’s moods.

Another such man, in my eyes, was Robin Williams. I remember, how upset so many of my friends and I were to hear of his death, last year. Mastery like his seemed to be a god- gifted talent, as my mother would call it, so intertwined with his character and being, it looked effortless.

Of course, much of this “stardom” labelling is subjective. Even if certain people are viewed favourably by the masses, there will always be someone who will call their “status” into question, or disagree. But there are some, like BB King and Robin Williams, who are universally accepted as legends.

And over the last year or so, we have lost some incredible talent: Maya Angelou, Bob Hoskins, Rik Mayall, Joe Cocker, Lauren Bacall and Richard Attenborough, to name a few as well as of course Robin Williams and BB King. These names are just off the top of my head and I would be interested to know if anyone would call into question the star like qualities of anyone on the list above.

And I would love to know what qualities you think people have whom you consider to be iconic. Who do you think of as a star?...

And because it is still so raw and fresh in my mind, here's another BB King song, not that I think we really need a reason. I struggled to listen to this all the way through on Friday, but I have made progress...in the words of the spectacular Mr King: “Let the good times roll…”