The two greatest female vocalists of all time, according to Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne is no stranger to the world of rock and roll singing. Although he may have indirectly started an entirely separate genre of music with Black Sabbath, he always maintained his status as a rock and roll star before anything else, usually shouting the praises of acts like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin when talking about his heroes. When looking at his favourite singers, though, ‘The Prince of Darkness’ knew that these two ladies could school any other rock and roll frontman that stood in their way.
Looking back on the lineage of Osbourne’s heroes, though, there is usually a set formula for the kind of singers he gravitated towards. No matter how much he liked the old guard of rock and roll like Paul McCartney and Ray Davies, the heaviest tunes in their catalogue always focused on getting a certain growl out of their voices the same way that Little Richard had done with rock and roll tunes back in the day.
Since all of that came from the blues, though, it wasn’t all that different to hear the magic behind Aretha Franklin’s voice. Although she fashioned herself as a gospel singer in some respects, hearing her belt at the top of her range is still the template for what every single diva should aspire to sound like, whether that’s hearing the power of her voice on ‘Respect’ or the pure sensuality of ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman’.
Even in the days when the British invasion bands were coming up, few could hold a candle to what Franklin was doing. Whether that was playing ballads or singing praise to her higher power, there was always that same soulful energy behind her voice that made you believe every word she was singing.
If Franklin was the gold standard for singers, though, Tina Turner was the one who proved that the soul queens could rock when they wanted to. As much as a band like The Rolling Stones could excite audiences every time they performed, Turner had them beat in terms of pure swagger and stamina, working the crowd for every second that she was onstage and still managing to work her magic into the 1980s when working on her comeback on Private Dancer.
And despite falling into the R&B category on a handful of her songs, she never lost her credentials as a rock and roll god. She had the same attitude as the rockstars before her, and whether that was playing the Acid Queen in the onscreen version of Tommy or turning ‘Proud Mary’ into a barnstormer, she held audiences in the palm of her hand whenever she performed.
Although there were a few predictable names in the mix when Osbourne mentioned his favourite singers to Rolling Stone, he knew that Franklin and Turner deserved a place alongside the greatest. It’s also easy to see where they left their mark on how ‘The Prince of Darkness’ sings.
While Sabbath were the stone age of metal, Osbourne’s stage behaviour seemed to take a few cues from how Turner worked a crowd, and listening back to tracks like ‘War Pigs’, there are a few hints of blues and gospel that seemed to be taken from what Franklin had been doing. So, for as much as people liked to claim that metal was the dark genre that was far uglier than anything else, Osbourne knew that what he was doing wasn’t all that different from the titans of R&B and rock and roll that came before him.
