Technically awesome? really? he always sounds like he's being strangled to me.

I didn't realise that Amy Winehouse was considered as technically amazing, it's her shrieking that's put me off her more recent work (previously it was the shocking music as well!).

As for people that really aren't that good but I wouldn't change, I think top of the list would be Gram Parsons with Elvis Costello a close second. I don't think it will be too long before someone suggests that the answer is actually David Bowie!

Also, this is the second thread today to mention Michael Bublé. It's strange that he's one of those people that I've heard of, seen the adverts in newspapers etc but I don't think I've ever actually heard.

Different kinds of music probably require different kinds of singer, and so to me a good singer is one who has the skills for his particular type of song. I know Dylan's singing is often criticised, and it has gone off over the years. But in the early days I think he was a very good singer, in that he developed a style which was ideal for his songs . It made you listen to the words, and he could distinguish the tunes. Joan Baez on the other hand, often regarded as a good singer, never makes me listen to the words, and tends to make the tunes samey. A good singer but working in the wrong style. Here's the two of them together for comparison.

I'm not Sheev!

"God's Away On Business"

Reading above how Joan Baez deflects away from the words with her voice, his Len-ness must be exactly the opposite, his diction is superb and it's rare that I mishear a word, yet he could hardly be described as a good singer.

Baez & Dylan singing together gives me a feeling is akin to a duet of nails/blackboard and expanded polystyrene.

isn't exactly a gifted singer. But who cares

... I know she's technically a decent singer, but I hate all her songs, her smug face and her inability to dance without looking like someone's pissed mum.

Strummer: Slurs his vocals, mumbles his lyrics and seems to be trying to remember them as he goes along.

Dylan: Nowadays sounds like a cross between Macy Gray and an anti-smoking advert, but his singing on John Wesley Harding and Blood On The Tracks especially is better than anything he's ever done.

Leonard Cohen: Somehow manages to convey emotion without conveying any emotion.

Colin Meloy: If Elmer Fudd had an acoustic, he'd sound like this.

Always loved New Order, but Bernard can't sing a note. Seen them live quite a few times and although he is awful at singing it somehow doesn't detract from the show.

Horrible singer. But his voice is on all my favourite Blue Öyster Cult tunes.

Let's remember, it's the material, not the voice. A voice is just an instrument.

Has been likened by the GLW to a "wounded, bellowing Oxen" and his voice is somewhat of an acquired taste, but I love it.

Peter Hammill - Very English.

Marc Almond apparently has a lot of fans, and can't sing for toffee. How you can be that far off and still put material out still amazes me to this day.

Technically bleedin' brilliant. Fakkin' bleedin' awful.

I was listening to Dylans Tell tale signs this week and thinking I like his voice better now than when he was Blowing in the wind. To me it is more relaxed, less affected.

Agree with Sheev though - none worse than Mercury. Bloody awful - made worse by the grotesque Brian May guitar solos.

I think that the way singing works upon us is something very different from what happens with instrumentalists. Accents, dialects, pitch—all of these, in normal conversation, create reactions in us that vary depending on who we are. The human voice is the instrument we hear all the time; guitars and pianos aren't how we conduct our lives.
My taste in singers has changed over time—often back and forth. In fact I’ve just come out of a period where I was barely listening to singers at all; nearly everyone sounded, somehow, false: certain classical pieces and early Armstrong/Ellington were mostly all I played.
I’ve also developed (for the second time) an antipathy to singers I’d describe as self-consciously “theatrical”: late-period Costello, Rufus Wainwright, both Buckleys—that type of thing. It’ll pass, but not for a while.
Strangely, though, someone like Liz Fraser, who could definitely be in that list, still works for me; I think it’s because I’m responding to her on the level of pure sound. Lyrics, and the idea of words, aren’t getting in the way.
Someone has described poetry as “heightened speech”. And that’s the way I feel about the singers who get me best at the moment. The ones who sound as if they’re talking to me: late-Dylan, Sinatra, Al Green, Paul Buchanan.