Items17The creator’s order
  1. 1Bob DylanBob DylanBorn 24 May 1941Bob Dylan was the acoustic voice of the folk revival when he played an electric set with a rock band at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 and was booed by part of the crowd. He kept going, with Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and the move redefined what a rock songwriter could be.0i
  2. 2Scott Walker (singer)Scott Walker (singer)Born 9 Jan 1943Scott Walker was a screaming-fan teen idol with the Walker Brothers in the mid-1960s, then left the group for orchestral solo albums of Jacques Brel songs and his own dark songwriting. After years in the wilderness he returned with the unsettling avant-garde records Tilt (1995) and The Drift…0i
  3. 3Joni MitchellJoni MitchellBorn 7 Nov 1943Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark (1974) was her biggest commercial success, and she followed it by moving steadily towards jazz with The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira and Mingus (1979), made with the bassist Charles Mingus. Sales and reviews dipped at the time, but those records are now among her…0i
  4. 4Steve MartinSteve MartinBorn 14 Aug 1945Steve Martin was playing arenas as the most popular stand-up comic in America when he gave up live comedy in 1981 to concentrate on films. His dark musical Pennies from Heaven flopped that year, but All of Me, Roxanne and Planes, Trains and Automobiles followed, and he later added novels, plays and…0i
  5. 5Neil YoungNeil YoungBorn 12 Nov 1945Neil Young answered his move to Geffen Records with Trans (1982), a vocoder-heavy synth album, and then a rockabilly record, Everybody's Rockin'. Geffen sued him in 1983 for making music unrepresentative of himself, and although the records baffled fans, he kept following his instincts and returned…0i
  6. 6George MichaelGeorge MichaelBorn 25 Jun 1963After the global success of Faith, George Michael made Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990) and refused to appear in its videos, famously casting supermodels to mime Freedom! '90 instead. He then sued Sony to escape his contract and lost in 1994, a costly fight that ended only when other labels…0i
  7. 7Kylie MinogueKylie MinogueBorn 28 May 1968Kylie Minogue left the Stock Aitken Waterman pop that made her famous for the indie label Deconstruction, and with Impossible Princess (1997) worked with Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield on an experimental, personal record. It sold modestly in Britain at the time but is now a fan…0i
  8. 8Jim CarreyJim CarreyBorn 17 Jan 1962Jim Carrey was the highest-paid comic actor of the mid-1990s on the back of rubber-faced hits such as Ace Ventura and The Mask. He chose Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998), Miloš Forman's Man on the Moon and Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), restrained performances that…0i
  9. 9Garth BrooksGarth BrooksBorn 7 Feb 1962Garth Brooks was the best-selling solo artist in America when he released Garth Brooks in... The Life of Chris Gaines (1999), a pop-rock album sung as a fictional alter ego for a planned film. The film was never made and the record was widely seen as a misstep, but it remains a rare example of a…0i
  10. 10Thom YorkeThom YorkeBorn 7 Oct 1968After OK Computer made Radiohead the most acclaimed guitar band in the world, Thom Yorke steered the group away from guitar rock towards electronic textures and fragmented lyrics. Kid A (2000) was released with no singles or conventional videos, topped the US chart regardless and is now widely…0i