Top 10 Greatest Female Musicians of All Time

Beyonce is the most awarded artist in Grammy history with 32 wins and 88 nominations as of 2024, and has sold over 200 million records worldwide across her solo career and her time with Destiny's Child. Her visual album Lemonade (2016) was acclaimed as one of the most significant political and artistic statements in popular music in a generation, while Cowboy Carter (2024) broke streaming records and redefined the boundaries between country and R&B. She is the first Black woman to headline Coachella (2018) and the first woman to headline Glastonbury as a solo artist in the festival's main slot.

Taylor Swift is the best-selling music artist of the 21st century by album sales, with over 200 million records sold, and is the only artist to have four albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200 in a single calendar year. Her Eras Tour (2023--2024) became the first concert tour to gross over $1 billion and is the highest-grossing tour in history by any artist. She won the Grammy for Album of the Year four times -- a record -- and her decision to re-record her first six albums after a dispute over ownership rights fundamentally reshaped the music industry's conversation about artist IP.

Celine Dion has sold over 200 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists in history and the best-selling Canadian artist of all time. Her recording of My Heart Will Go On -- the theme from Titanic (1997) -- became one of the best-selling singles ever made and remains one of the most recognisable songs in popular music. She holds 5 Grammy Awards and 8 American Music Awards, and her Las Vegas residencies -- grossing over $385 million -- redefined what a permanent concert residency could achieve commercially and artistically.

Mariah Carey has sold over 200 million records worldwide and holds the distinction of having the most number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 of any solo artist in history with 19. Dubbed the "Songbird Supreme" by Guinness World Records for her five-octave vocal range, she pioneered the use of melisma in contemporary pop and directly influenced a generation of vocalists including Beyonce, Ariana Grande, and Jennifer Hudson. All I Want for Christmas Is You (1994) has broken streaming records every year since digital music began and became only the fourth song in history to top the Billboard Hot 100 more than 25 years after its release.

Dolly Parton is the most honoured female country music performer of all time, with 49 Grammy nominations, 11 Grammy Awards, and inductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2022). Her 1973 composition I Will Always Love You -- which she wrote, recorded, and owns the publishing rights to -- has been recorded by hundreds of artists, and Whitney Houston's 1992 version earned Parton the highest-ever single royalty cheque in country music history. She donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University in 2020 that helped fund the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, demonstrating that her cultural impact extends far beyond music.

Tina Turner (1939--2023), the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll," staged one of the most remarkable career revivals in music history when her solo comeback album Private Dancer (1984) sold over 20 million copies after two decades of relative commercial obscurity as part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. She holds the record for the largest live concert audience ever drawn by a single performer -- 180,000 at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro in 1988 -- and her 1989-1990 Foreign Affair tour grossed $98 million. She won 12 Grammy Awards and is the only performer inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, once as part of a duo and once as a solo artist.

Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (1995) is the best-selling debut album by any female artist in history and one of the best-selling albums of all time with over 33 million copies sold worldwide. Released when Morissette was 21, its raw confessional songwriting -- tackling sexual autonomy, anger, betrayal, and self-discovery with an unflinching directness that had no precedent in mainstream female pop -- permanently widened the space available to women in rock music. She won 7 Grammy Awards, and Jagged Little Pill was selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry in 2022 as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."