Céline Dion fans are sharing their outrage after the Canadian superstar was left off Rolling Stone’s list of “The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.”
On Twitter, Jann Arden declared: “Celine Dion should be on this list. Full stop.”
She added: “A lame system ‘ranking’ artists of any description— is not only tone deaf (see what I did there) but a desperate attempt to seem cool and more ‘in the know’ than the rest of us music lovers out here. Pure s**te. These compilers need to be held down and farted on.”
Jamie Lambert, a theatre producer, opined in a tweet: “Respectfully, not including Celine Dion, arguably the best vocal technician of all time, in this list is borderline treasonous.”
Entertainment journalist Rama Tampubolon tweeted: “Look... you can argue Celine Dion's music is not your cup of tea and that's fair. You can argue Celine's songs are now irrelevant in today's Billie Eilish generation and that's also fair. But to say that Celine Dion is not among all-time greatest singers is unbelievable.”
User @CelineOracle said Dion “is a top 3 vocalist of all time” and Rolling Stone “needs to immediately exit the business of music journalism.”
@BonnieBernstein opined that leaving Dion off the list “has to be an honest and regrettable mistake… because doing it intentionally would be criminal. So… please fix it.”
Going further, @elasticdijon called the omission “a crime against humanity.”
TV host Trevor Scott suggested leaving Dion off the list “MUST be an intentional ploy, a would-be viral grab.”
Rolling Stone, anticipating criticism, explained it listed the greatest singers, not greatest voices. “Sure, many of the people here were born with massive pipes, perfect pitch, and boundless range. Others have rougher, stranger, or more delicate instruments,” it explained. “What mattered most to us was originality, influence, the depth of an artist’s catalogue, and the breadth of their musical legacy.
“A voice can be gorgeous like Mariah Carey’s, rugged like Toots Hibbert’s, understated like Willie Nelson’s, slippery and sumptuous like D’Angelo’s, or bracing like Bob Dylan’s. But in the end, the singers behind it are here for one reason: They can remake the world just by opening their mouths.”
Canada is represented on the list by Neil Young (No. 133), The Weeknd (No. 110), Leonard Cohen (No. 103) and Joni Mitchell (No. 50).
Rolling Stone ranked Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday and Mariah Carey as its top five singers. Taylor Swift (No. 102) is well ahead of Barbra Streisand (No. 147) and Michael Jackson (No. 86) ranked lower than Kurt Cobain (No. 36). BTS member Jung Kook is No. 191 on the list, three spots greater than Kelly Clarkson.