The mercurial David Bowie is the original pop chameleon. He's been everything from inoffensive pop singer to glam icon to white soul man to art-rocker and more in the course of his long, prolific career. Although Bowie's first hit was 1969's "Space O…

Joni Mitchell emerged as a darling of the late 1960s folk scene as a lyrically gifted songwriter and honey-voiced golden girl. In the '70s, she went on to incorporate jazz and confessional pop-rock into her musical vision, ultimately creating a poeti…

Tom Waits started out in the early 1970s as a piano-based barroom balladeer with a penchant for beat poetry and West Coast jazz. By the late '80s he had mutated into a brilliantly adventurous artist whose style suggested an amalgam of Howlin' Wolf, K…

Bob Dylan began as a Woody Guthrie acolyte, imitating the dust-bowl balladeer as faithfully as a baby boomer from Hibbing, Minnesota, could. It wasn't long before he found his own voice, spearheading the early-1960s folk revival as well as the singer…

Originally part of the early 1960s British blues/R&B scene, the Rolling Stones rapidly ascended the heights of fame with a perfect combination of hit singles and media-grabbing scandals. By the '70s, Keith Richards had become a bona fide guitar hero,…

Lou Reed is among the most literate wordsmiths in rock & roll history. His first decade of post-Velvet Underground work included some undeniable high points (BERLIN, the David Bowie-produced TRANSFORMER) but he was plagued by inconsistency. Reed came…

Montreal's Leonard Cohen was a well-respected poet and novelist before he ever entered the songwriting fray in the 1960s. His dark, poetic vision rivaled that of Dylan, and his songs inspired countless cover versions, by everyone from Judy Collins to…

Rising from the ashes of the amusingly named rock band Y Kant Tori Read, Tori Amos debuted with LITTLE EARTHQUAKES in 1992, a stunning set of brutally honest and emotionally wrought songs that recalled Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush without being slavis…

This Athens band's initial mix of Velvet Underground strum, Byrds-like Rickenbacker jangle, and charismatically oblique singing, became the sound of the 1980s as legions of bands followed suit. But even as imitators codified R.E.M.'s approach into th…

From their early days as the house band for Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the Velvet Underground were the antithesis of late-1960s Flower Power optimism. Lou Reed's decadent lyrics and dour vocals proved to be the perfect match for the …

b. 15 November 1932, Epsom, Surrey, England. Her Welsh mother, a soprano, taught Petula to sing, which enabled her to commence a stage career at the age of seven and a broadcasting career two years later. Her youthful image and crystal-clear enunciat…

Johnny Cash was part rockabilly rebel, part campfire storyteller, part outlaw in black. Cash made country and rockabilly history on the Sun label in the 1950s. During the '60s, the ruggedly charismatic Cash rose to superstardom, ending the decade wit…

In the early 1990s, Polly Jean Harvey's music was a bracing post-punk battle cry, staking out new territory for female alt-rock artists without resorting to didactic feminism. Over time, Harvey has grown more subtle and moody, embracing a more expans…

He began as a Guthrie/Dylan-style folkie, but soon Donovan Leitch adopted a more psychedelic flower-power stance. His knack for sunny, wistful pop songs produced a batch of giant 1960s hits. His fragile manchild voice and image made him a hippie pinu…

Joan Baez, one of the most influential folk singers of her generation, is possessed of an incredibly pure, clear and beautiful voice that has enabled her to sing music by a wide array of composers. Also known as a political activist, she was a very v…

A long-standing critical and fan favorite whose post-1960s work was sadly neglected during her lifetime, the whiskey-voiced Dusty Springfield is arguably the single most important British soul singer ever. And her stirring performances on the landmar…