Françoise Hardy is amazed to be in the ranking of the 200 best singers of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.
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Asked about this honor by RTL, the musician is convinced that she does not deserve to be included.
“Of course it touches me and makes me happy, even though I don’t quite deserve to be in this ranking. It is all the same abnormal that much better singers than me like, for example, Edith Piaf, who composed Life in pink, are not there”, she reacted.
The list consecrates Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday and Mariah Carey in the first five positions. We then find Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Otis Redding and Al Green to complete the top 10.
Big names have been left out, including that of Celine Dion. Fans of the Quebec singer did not fail to express their disagreement and their anger at the choices deemed controversial by the American magazine.
The ranking also ignored the names of Madonna, Pink, Cher, Janet Jackson, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, Dionne Warwick and Annie Lennox.
These omissions are all the more noticeable as the awards list includes less convincing female voices, notably those of Rihanna (68e), de Taylor Swift (102e), de Courtney Love (130e), de Carrie Underwood (158e), de Sylvester (169e), by Marianne Faithfull (173e), by Bonnie Raitt (187e), de Kelly Clarkson (194e) and Billie Eilish (198e).
For the singer Françoise Hardy, anyway, “we should not pay too much attention to this kind of rankings”. The reason ? They “change a lot from year to year”.
“It’s quite incomprehensible, but very flattering. I won’t resist the temptation to brag about it. Just kidding,” she added, humorously.
However, as the magazine stated in the preamble, this ranking “is not the list of the greatest voices”, and “what mattered most was the originality, the influence, the extent of the repertoire of the artist and the impact of their work and their legacy. Pledge that Françoise Hardy ticks all the boxes.