Everyone knows that singers like Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera have tremendous vocal range, but who would have thought that Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose could beat them all.
Concerthotels.com, "one of the most popular travel services for value conscious leisure travelers", has compiled a list of the singers with the greatest range. They took the top 100 singers as identified by Rolling Stone and added in a few modern artists, including the nominees for the Billboard Music Awards, and used data from the site The Range Place, which compiles lists of the highest and lowest notes sung by artists on their studio recordings, to come up with their rankings.
What they found was that Axl Rose actually edged out Mariah Carey as the artist with the most range, going from F1 on There Was a Time to Bb6 on Ain't That Fun, a range of five octaves plus 2-1/2 notes. Carey was second, ranging from F2 on Sweetheart to G7 on Emotions (five octaves plus 1 note) while third place Prince went from E2 (Daddy Pop) to B6 (God), or four octaves plus four notes.
At the bottom of the list is country star Luke Bryan with a range of A2 to A4 (two octaves), Taylor Swift with E3 to F#5 (two octaves plus 1-1/2 notes) and, surprisingly, Karen Carpenter (D3 to F5, two octaves plus 2 notes).
Mariah Carey is the queen of high notes, hitting a G7 while Axl Rose has the lowest at an F1.
The complete chart is below, courtesy of Concerthotels.com.
The top ten:
1.Axl Rose - 5 octaves, 2-1/2 notes
2.Mariah Carey - 5 octaves, 1 note
3.Prince - 4 octaves, 4 notes
4.Steven Tyler - 4 octaves, 1 note
5.James Brown - 4 octaves, 1/2 note
6.Marvin Gaye - 4 octaves, 1/2 note
7.Christina Aguilera - 4 octaves, 1/2 note
8.David Bowie - 4 octaves, 1/2 note
9.Paul McCartney - 4 octaves
10.Thom Yorke - 4 octaves
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