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“Hard to find better”: the band Bob Dylan said had the best singers

Wed 8 April 2026 18:00, UK

Bob Dylan isn’t usually the first person that comes to mind when you talk about the greatest vocal techniques in rock and roll.

His voice is incredibly distinctive, and there’s no one else who could have sung his songs but him back in the 1960s, but it wasn’t like he was going to be competing with the likes of Frank Sinatra around the same time, either. He was much more interested in delivering the best tunes that he could, but he was always aware when he was listening to some of the greatest singers that rock and roll had ever produced.

But rock and roll has never been a genre really keen on having the best singers in the world. Little Richard was an absolute showstopper whenever he tapped into that higher register when he sang, but when looking through a lot of the biggest names in rock and roll, The Beatles took everything that their idols did and amplified it by ten when they first started performing together.

The Fab Four were already a sponge of all of their influences, and it wasn’t out of the question for them to switch up their vocal styles to suit whatever song they were playing. After all, they already had four different voices to trade off of, and while John Lennon could put his back into nearly every single heartbreaking ballad that he could think of, Paul McCartney’s massive scream is still one of the finest in rock history, especially when he was covering old rock and roll numbers like ‘Long Tall Sally’.

And while Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison had a lot of swagger behind their delivery, Dylan felt that The Beatles were the best collective of singers that he had ever heard, saying, “Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go. I was not about to put up with other musicians, but in my head, The Beatles were it. They were fantastic singers. Lennon, to this day, it’s hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is.”

Aside from their vocal prowess, though, it was also about the tone of their voices that resonated with everyone. Not everyone was used to the advanced harmonies that they were doing on all of their albums, but when you look through a song like ‘This Boy’, every single one of them hit their mark absolutely perfectly when it comes time to harmonise, and that’s before even bringing up tunes like ‘Because’.

So, for a band with that much talent, the fact that they were trying to sound like Dylan was a hell of a compliment back in the day, and while Dylan and Lennon always had a bit of a song rivalry going on every single time they came up with a standout track, even if Dylan could mock The Beatles every now and again, they were always right behind him, coming up with tunes that outmatched him. ‘Just Like A Woman’ was a classic, but it was nothing compared to ‘Girl’.

But even if the world didn’t have that much time with all the Beatles, Dylan was at least going to take a few cues from what they were doing. He was always knocked back by what Macca could do with his music, and even though he preferred to work alone, the fact that he could manage to get a few songs out of George Harrison and the rest of the Traveling Wilburys showed that he could indeed work well with others.

If you were to break down all of their talents, though, The Beatles were put on this Earth to give their voices to the world. No one was quite ready for them to be over so quickly, but when looking through their vast catalogue, they gave all of us more than our fair share of fantastic vocal performances.