Late singer Lata Mangeshkar has featured at the 84th spot in Rolling Stone’s 200 Best Singers of All Time. The list also stars the late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
South Korean singer-songwriter Lee Ji-eun, better known by her stage name IU, is also a part of the list. BTS’ youngest singer Jungkook also features in the list.
Rolling Stone, talking about Lata wrote, “The crystalline, eternally girlish voice of ‘the Melody Queen’ is a cornerstone of Indian pop music, with a global influence spread via Bollywood films, whose golden era she defined. Lata was the empress of playback singers, the vocal magicians who perform songs for actors to lip-sync in lavish movie musicals, recording over 7,000 such songs, by some estimates.”
Known as the Indian nightingale, Lata died in February 2022 at the age of 92. She sang many songs in her career and recorded them in over 36 languages. She lent her voice to actors such as Meena Kumari, Jaya Bachchan, Rakhee, Sharmila Tagore, Sridevi, Kajol and Madhuri Dixit among many others.
Born in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, she is the recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award and Bharat Ratna for her exceptional contribution to the field of music. Her name also appeared in Guinness World Record as the most-recorded artist between 1948 and 1987.
