Greatest musicians (all time)

Alexandre Michel Gérard Desplat (born 23 August 1961) is a French and Greek film composer. He has won one Academy Award for his soundtrack to the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and received seven additional Academy Award nominatio...

Steven Siro Vai (born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, songwriter, singer, and producer who has sold over 15 million albums. After starting his career as a music transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, he recorded and toured in Z...

Carlos Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican and American musician who first became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American music. He has won 10 Gram...

Albert King Nelson (April 25, 1923 – December 21, 1992), known professionally as Albert King, was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing. One of the "Three Kings of the B...

Freddie King (September 3, 1934 – December 28, 1976) was an American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Three Kings" of electric blues guitar along with Albert King and B.B. King. Freddie King based h...

Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician. He began performing in a group covering Shadows instrumentals in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded t...

Leonard Norman Cohen (born 21 September 1934) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, painter, poet, and novelist. His work has explored religion, politics, isolation, sexuality, and personal relationships. Cohen has been indu...

Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, also known as Rodríguez or Jesús Rodríguez (born July 10, 1942), is an American folk musician from Detroit, Michigan. His career initially proved short lived, with two little-sold albums in the early 1970s an...

Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influen...

Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac and (briefly) Makaveli, was an American rapper, author, actor, and poet. As of 2007, Shakur has sold over 75 million records worldwide, ma...

Clifford Lee "Cliff" Burton (February 10, 1962 – September 27, 1986) was an American musician, best known as the bass guitarist for the American thrash metal band Metallica. Burton joined Metallica in 1982 and performed on the ban...

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer of operas. Verdi was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a l...

Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer and music critic. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he co...

Yasiin Bey ( born Dante Terrell Smith; December 11, 1973), better known by his former stage name Mos Def ), is an American hip hop recording artist, actor, comedian, and activist from Brooklyn, New York City, New York...

John Michael Stipe (born January 4, 1960) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, film producer, music video director, and visual artist. He was the lead singer of the alternative rock band R.E.M. from their formation in 1980...

Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer. Schubert died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal work...

Claude-Achille Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself disliked the term when applie...

Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Liszt Ferencz, in modern usage Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, philanthropist and Franc...

Antonín Leopold Dvořák (8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. Following the nationalist example of Bedřich Smetana, Dvořák frequently employed aspects, specifically rhythms, of the folk music of Moravia and his nati...

Ennio Morricone (born November 10, 1928) is an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor and former trumpet player, who has written music for more than 500 motion pictures and television series, as well as contemporary classical w...

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous...

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner (born 2 October 1951), known professionally by his stage name Sting, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, actor, and philanthropist. He was the principal songwrit...

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. He is often referred to as "the King of Rock and Roll", or simply, "the King".

Björk Guðmundsdóttir (born 21 November 1965), known mononymously as Björk, is an Icelandic experimental singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and occasional actress. She initially became known as the lead singer of the alterna...

John Ono Lennon, born John Winston Lennon; (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), was an English musician, singer and songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as a founder member of the rock band the Beatles, the most commercially succe...

Josquin des Prez (c. 1450/1455 – 27 August 1521), often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. His original name is sometimes given as Josquin Lebloitte and his later name is given under a...

Nicholas Berkeley "Nick" Mason (born 27 January 1944) is an English musician and composer, best known as the drummer of Pink Floyd. He is the only constant member of the band since its formation in 1965. Despite solely writing onl...

George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter and music and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although...

Joseph "Joe" Satriani (born July 15, 1956) is an American instrumental rock guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Early in his career, Satriani worked as a guitar instructor, with many of his former students achieving fame, such as...

Enya (born Eithne Ní Bhraonáin; anglicised as Enya Brennan; 17 May 1961) is an Irish singer-songwriter, musician, and producer. She has sold 26.5 million RIAA-certified albums in the US and an estimated 75 million worldwide, makin...

Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994) was an American musician who was best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Nirvana. Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in Aberd...

Paul Frederic Simon is an American musician, actor and singer-songwriter. Simon's fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel...

Michael Hoenig (born 4 January 1952) is a German composer who has composed music for several films and games

Bryan Guy Adams (born 5 November 1959) is a Canadian musician, singer, and photographer.

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronolo...

Nobuo Uematsu (植松 伸夫, born March 21, 1959) is a Japanese video game composer, best known for scoring the majority of titles in the Final Fantasy series. Uematsu, a self-taught musician, began playing the piano at the age of eleven...

Robert John "Robin" Finck (born November 7, 1971) is an American guitarist. He is one of only a few artists who has played in two different bands listed on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock": Nine Inch Nails (ranked no. 43)...

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.

Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orch...

Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions put the music of Norway in the international spectrum, as well as...

Richard Hugh "Ritchie" Blackmore (born 14 April 1945) is an English guitarist and songwriter, who began his professional career as a session musician as a member of the instrumental band The Outlaws and as a backing musician of po...

Adam Thomas Jones (born January 15, 1965) is a three-time Grammy Award-winning American musician and visual artist, best known for his position as the guitarist for Tool. Jones is also the director of the majority of Tool's music...

Claire Elise Boucher (born March 17, 1988), better known by her stage name Grimes, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, music video director, and record producer. Born and raised in Vancouver, she first became involved with the under...

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the mod...

James Roy Horner (August 14, 1953 – June 22, 2015) was an American composer, conductor and orchestrator of film scores. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for his fre...

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and humanitarian. He is best known for his work with his E Street Band. He is nicknamed "The Boss".

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer, songwriter and actor, best known as lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones.

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and actor. Called the King of Pop, his contributions to music and dance, along with his publicized personal life...

Edward Christopher "Ed" Sheeran (born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter, musician, and occasional actor.

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She rose to prominence after releasing her self-titled debut studio album Mariah Carey in 1990. It went multiplatinum and...