30 Greatest Female Singers Of The 70’s

---

Forbes
30 Greatest Female Singers Of The 70’s
By Toni Fitzgerald
Feb 8, 2025

---

---

The 1970s produced some of the most talented, prolific and iconic female vocalists of all time. From once-in-a-lifetime voices like Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin to pop culture royalty like Patti Smith, Bette Midler, and Dolly Parton to women whose music never falls out of style like Carole King and Kate Bush, the ‘70s served up incredible achievements by women. The best ’70s female singers generated commercial success while also gaining critical acclaim. Many of them also earned awards, such as Grammys, that spoke to their massive appeal among audiences and fellow artists alike. This list of the 30 greatest 1970s female vocalists includes voices of all types performing some of the biggest ’70s songs.

Top Female Singers Of The 1970s
The ’70s were a decade of change in the music industry, with the rise of new genres like disco, and the start of the punk and glam metal eras. Rock, soul and funk also remained popular, and women began to play more of a role in the industry as songwriters and producers.

Singers such as Tina Turner, Diana Ross and Stevie Nicks showed a sharp ear for what the public liked while also serving up critically acclaimed hits. They set the table for future artists like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift by leaning into their femininity without sacrificing their strength. This list of top female 1970s vocalists was determined based on performers’ musical legacy, the number of hits and albums they produced, how their music performed commercially and their critical appeal.

30. Brenda Lee
    Lee got her start as a teenager, with her first hit, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” charting in 1958. But nearly two decades later, she was still a huge success. She sold more than 100 million albums, and in the ’70s, she became a country singer and found a new legion of fans.

Lee’s country hits included “Nobody Wins” and “Sunday Sunrise.” She recorded nearly three dozen albums, the most recent released in 2007, and she earned a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2009. While she’s no longer releasing music, “Rockin’” hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 2023, making her the oldest woman ever (at 79) to do so.

29. Barbara Mandrell
    Mandrell was one of the most successful female country artists of the 1970s, eventually wracking up six No. 1 songs and 25 top-10 singles. The Texas native first performed at age 13 and became a regular on the TV show Town Hall Party. Though her family briefly had a band, she largely performed solo.

Two of her biggest hits were “Midnight Oil” and “Tonight My Baby’s Coming Home,” both from the successful album Midnight Oil, which spawned almost a half-dozen hits. She is known for 1979’s “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right,” and produced 27 albums, the most recent in 1994. Mandrell was admitted to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009, though she doesn’t perform anymore.

28. Joan Baez
    Known as much for her activism as her distinctive voice, folk singer Baez started recording in 1960 and had three successive gold albums to start. She is famous for interpreting other artists’ songs, including Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

A performer at Woodstock, Baez’s greatest hits include “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Sweet Sir Galahad” and “We Shall Overcome.” The 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Baez has protested for human rights, social justice and the environment, as well as against the Iraq War. She recorded 31 albums, the most recent, Whistle Down the Wind, in 2018.

27. June Carter Cash
    A gifted vocalist who played banjo, guitar, autoharp and harmonica, June Carter Cash had a solo career following a well-documented start at age 10 as part of the Carter Family, a folk music group. She also later performed with husband Johnny Cash, for whom she wrote the hit song “Ring of Fire.”

Her hits included “Jukebox Blues,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and “Jackson.” Despite all her success, Carter Cash only recorded three solo albums, the first of which, Appalachian Pride, came out in 1975. She won five Grammy Awards and her last solo album, Wildwood Flower, was released posthumously in 2003.

26. Judy Collins
    With a career that includes an incredible 36 studio albums and nine live albums, Collins is one of the most prolific singer/songwriters of her era, releasing her first album in 1961 and becoming more popular by the late 1960s. While she started as a folk singer, her sound evolved to include rock and country.

She released her biggest hit, “Send in the Clowns,” in 1975. It hit the Billboard charts then and again in 1977, and she earned a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance. The album “Clowns” was on, Judith, was also Collins’ bestselling album, eventually going platinum. Collins continues to record into her 80s. Her last album, Spellbound (2022), earned a Grammy nod for Best Folk Album.

25. Bette Midler
    The velvet-voiced star of stage and screen began in Off-Broadway and Broadway productions in the 1960s, but she rose to fame in 1970 by singing at the legendary Continental Baths, going on to release nine albums and selling 30 million copies worldwide, including three multiplatinum.

Barry Manilow, a close friend, produced The Divine Miss M, Midler’s first album, in 1972, and it became a top-10 smash. Her biggest single of the ’70s was also one of the decade’s most poignant and gorgeously sung songs, “The Rose.” It earned Midler a Grammy for Best Female Pop Performance. The Tony winner for 2017’s Hello, Dolly continues to act today, though she hasn’t released an album since 2014.

24. Phoebe Snow
    There was nothing Snow couldn’t sing. Folk, gospel, blues, jazz, rock—she did it all and did it well. Her four-octave range set her apart, and while she recorded most of her music as a solo artist, she also worked with others occasionally, including Paul Simon and Sisters of Glory.

British producer Denny Cordell discovered Snow in 1972 at The Bitter End Club in New York City, producing her first album, titled Phoebe Snow. It went top-five on the Billboard charts and earned Snow a Grammy nod for Best New Artist and a spot on Rolling Stone’s cover. Some of her hit singles include “Poetry Man” and “Harpo’s Blues.” Snow recorded a dozen albums, her last one released in 2008, three years before her death.

23. Helen Reddy
    The Australian-American got her start at age 4 with her showbiz-focused family and later won a talent contest on the TV program Bandstand. During the 1970s, she had 14 Top 40 singles, including the song she’s best known for, “I Am Woman.”

Reddy became the inaugural winner of the Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist category at the American Music Awards. She was named the 28th greatest contemporary artist by Billboard in 2011. Reddy, who won a Grammy for “Woman,” recorded 17 albums, the most recent in 2000. Her other notable singles include “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady,” “Angie Baby” and “You and Me Against the World.”

22. Sarah Vaughan
    Jazz singer extraordinaire Vaughan had the type of voice people dream about. The nine-time Grammy Award nominee and two-time winner began by singing in church and eventually dropped out of high school to pursue a musical career. She won an amateur night at the Apollo Theater in the 1940s, and the rest was music history.

While she had been recording for decades, she released her signature song, “Send in the Clowns,” in the ’70s. She also did performances with symphonies, including one at the Hollywood Bowl. “If You Could See Me Now” was another of her hits from her nearly 50 albums, most performed solo but several with Count Basie. She released her final album in 1987, three years before her death.

21. Teena Marie
    A successful solo artist who sang soul and R&B as well as playing guitar and congas, Marie started auditioning for acting roles as a child, and appeared on The Beverly Hillbillies. As she got older, she wanted to focus on music, and she formed a band with her brother and cousin.

She signed with Motown Records as a solo act in the mid-1970s, and Rick James produced her debut album, Wild and Peaceful. The two sang a duet, “I’m a Sucker for Your Love,” that became Marie’s first top-10 hit. She was the first white woman to perform on Soul Train, and she released hits like “I Need Your Lovin.’” In all, she had 14 albums, her final one released in 2013.

20. Liza Minnelli
    Four-time Tony winner, gay icon and daughter of Judy Garland, Minelli inherited her mother’s talent, making her Off-Broadway debut as a teenager. She earned acclaim as an actress throughout the 1960s, but it was her role as Sally Bowles in 1972’s Cabaret, that earned her an Oscar and cemented her superstar singer status.

Her concert performance at Carnegie Hall in 1979 is regarded as one of her most successful engagements. Her signature hits include “Maybe This Time,” “Cabaret” and “New York, New York.” She recorded 11 studio albums, with her last, Confessions, coming out in 2010.

19. Patti Smith
    Punk rocker Patti Smith was born to sing—her mom was a former jazz singer, and she encouraged her eldest daughter’s interest in music, including giving her a Bob Dylan album the year she graduated high school. She spent time doing performance art and spoken poetry and was considered as lead singer for Blue Oyster Cult.

In 1973, she and two others formed the Patti Smith Group, which included poems by Smith on its first album, Horses. She collaborated with many artists over the years, including R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, and toured with Bob Dylan. She recorded 12 solo and group albums, plus a song for the Hunger Games films. She also won a National Book Award for her memoir.

18. Roberta Flack
    With hits including “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly,” Flack pioneered the “quiet storm” contemporary R&B subgenre, putting a smooth, romantic twist on her performances. Her achievements included becoming the first artist ever to win back-to-back Grammys for Album of the Year.

Flack began singing and playing piano through her church, and she was so talented, she earned a full scholarship to Howard University at age 15. She taught school and sang at Washington, D.C., nightclubs after graduation, eventually signing with Atlantic Records. Flack recorded 18 albums, the last released in 2018. She won five Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement in 2020.

17. Tammy Wynette
    Another hugely influential country artist, Wynette was one of country’s female pioneers, helping to open the male-dominated genre to women. She recorded her signature song, “Stand by Your Man,” in 1968, but she remained among country’s most successful artists in the ’70s and showed impressive career longevity.

Following an early marriage that ended in divorce, Wynette headed to Nashville in 1965 to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. She released her first single a year later and had her first hit, “Your Good Girl’s Gone Bad,” by 1967. In the ’70s, in addition to winning Female Vocalist of the Year from the Country Music Association, she released lots of albums and also collaborated with third husband George Jones. She recorded 34 solo albums and 10 with Jones, the last one just a few years before her death in 1998.

16. Donna Summer
    Summer became one of the best-known ‘70s artists by embracing the disco era, but that’s not how she got her start. She began as the lead singer of a psychedelic rock band, Crow, in the ’60s. By 1976, following a brief interlude in Munich, she returned to the U.S. and began releasing disco songs.

“Love to Love You Baby,” “Last Dance,” “Heaven Knows” and “Hot Stuff” were some of her best-known songs, and she eventually had 14 top-10 singles and four No. 1 songs. Later hits included “She Works Hard For the Money” and “This Time I Know It’s For Real.” Summer had 17 solo albums and earned five Grammys on 18 nominations.

15. Celia Cruz
    Not only was Cruz arguably the most successful Latin American artist of the 1970s, but she also sold more than 10 million albums and earned the nickname “the Queen of Salsa.” Her career began in her native Cuba with the band Sonora Matancera, with whom Cruz stayed for 15 years.

In 1965, she went solo after fleeing Cuba for Mexico and later the United States. She partnered with Tito Puente and then recorded “Quimbara,” one of her biggest hits. After joining the salsa scene in the ’70s, she released hits like “La vida es un carnival.” Cruz won two Grammys and three Latin Grammys and recorded 37 albums.

14. Kate Bush
    A precocious girl who took up songwriting at age 11, Bush stepped onto the British charts at just 19 with her hit “Wuthering Heights,” which spent four weeks at No. 1 in 1978, and made her the first female artist in the UK to have an entirely self-written song hit the top of the charts.

Bush’s “progressive pop” sound flourished as she grew older and more famous. Her 1980s hit “Running Up That Hill” also enjoyed a second life in 2022 when it was used in the Netflix series Stranger Things. Eight of her nine studio albums went top five in the UK, and all hit the top 10. Her last album came out in 2011, and she has stayed busy with smaller creative projects since then. She was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.

13. Karen Carpenter
    Named one of the greatest 100 singers of all time by Rolling Stone, Carpenter put a three-octave range on beautiful display in both her solo work and as part of The Carpenters with brother, Richard. The two began playing gigs as teenagers and signed with A&M Records when she was 19.

Originally a drummer as well as a singer, Carpenter gradually moved to frontwoman of the Carpenters, whose greatest hits included “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.” She released 14 albums, two of them posthumously. Alas, Carpenter’s biggest legacy was calling attention to the dangers of anorexia nervosa, which she died from at age 32. The disease wasn’t well known in the early ’80s, and her celebrity status brought it more notice.

12. Carole King
    King has both an incredible voice and a gift for songwriting—she wrote or co-wrote 118 songs that made the Billboard Hot 100. She started behind the scenes as a writer and began performing in the 1970s with a folk rock blend that made Tapestry and other albums a hit.

For 20 years, Tapestry held the record for longest reign at No. 1 by a female artist thanks to hits like “I Feel the Earth Move” and “It’s Too Late.” King recorded 25 albums, selling more than 75 million copies. In 2013, she became the first woman to win the Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, and she’s in both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her most recent album came out in 2001, and she has been an environmental activist for decades.

11. Gladys Knight
    Gladys Knight, known as the Empress of Soul, has earned nearly every honor in music. The seven-time Grammy winner with two songs in the Grammy Hall of Fame is also a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member and Vocal Group Hall of Fame inductee. Rolling Stone named her to its 100 best singers list.

She began singing at church at age 4 and won a TV contest as a child. She formed Gladys Knight and the Pips with her brother and cousins, and they released their first album when she was only 16. By the 1970s, they had become established hitmakers. Their most successful single was “Midnight Train to Georgia.” Knight also had a solo career, and her recording of “That’s What Friends Are For” with Dionne Warwick, Sir Elton John and Stevie Wonder was a smash. She recorded 33 solo and group albums before retiring.

10. Patti LaBelle
    R&B legend LaBelle, nicknamed the Godmother of Soul, rose to fame in the 1960s as frontwoman of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles (later Labelle). Their biggest hit, “Lady Marmalade,” came out in 1974, and LaBelle went solo shortly after. Her 1977 album Patti LaBelle included her signature song, “You Are My Friend.”

LaBelle won two Grammys and sold more than 50 million albums. She earned induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame and Apollo Theater Hall of Fame in addition to making Rolling Stone’s list of top 100 singers. She recorded 11 albums with Labelle and 19 solo. LaBelle has mostly retired from performing and has successful lines of bedding and food, though she had told media outlets she had an album coming out in 2024 that hasn’t materialized yet.

9. Stevie Nicks
   One of the greatest rockers of all time, Nicks was the frontwoman for Fleetwood Mac and went on to a successful solo career. The band sold more than 120 million albums, including the acclaimed Rumors, which went 20 times platinum. Nicks released 15 albums total with Fleetwood Mac and as a soloist.

The eight-time Grammy winner joined a band in high school and met future bandmate/boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham during her senior year. Their fraught relationship later provided a lot of songwriting fuel for Fleetwood Mac. The pair dropped out of college and released their first album in 1971. The first Fleetwood Mac album came out in 1975 and included hit single “Rhiannon.” Other smashes included “Edge of 17,” “Landslide,” “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way.” Nicks continues to tour today and released a new song in 2024.

8. Carly Simon
   With 13 Top 40 hits in the U.S., a string she began in the ’70s, Simon is one of the most successful singers ever. She and her sister performed as the Simon Sisters and released their first album in 1963, when Carly was 20. They recorded two more albums before Simon went solo in 1971.

Her self-titled album earned her a Best New Artist Grammy, and she followed that up with hits like “Anticipation,” “Nobody Does It Better,” “You’re So Vain” and “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain.” “Vain” has always been the subject of speculation, as people wondered which famous boyfriend Simon wrote it about. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee had 24 Billboard Hot 100 singles and recorded 22 solo studio albums, the most recent released in 2009.

7. Linda Ronstadt
   One of the most versatile female vocalists of the 1970s, Ronstadt has sung rock, country, Latin music and even opera. She earned 11 Grammys and three American Music Awards as well as the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for recording solo and as part of the supergroup Trio.

Ronstadt got her start in the 1960s with folk rock trio Stone Poneys. By 1969, she had released her first solo album. Her biggest hits include “You’re No Good” as well as the duets “Somewhere Out There” (with James Ingram) and “Don’t Know Much” (with Aroon Neville). She has recorded 24 studio albums plus more than a dozen compilations and greatest hits. She retired in 2011 due to a neurodegenerative disease.

6. Dolly Parton
   Parton burst onto the scene in 1967 with the debut album Hello, I’m Dolly, and she has been a major part of country music and the industry generally since. She hit her peak on the charts in the 1970s, and she’s one of the bestselling artists of all time and has her own record label.

Parton generated 25 No. 1 singles and a record 44 Top 10 country albums. The writer of more than 3,000 songs, some of her top hits include “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You.” She won 11 Grammys and has received Tony, Oscar and Emmy nods, too. In addition to her 49 solo studio albums, the most recent in 2023, she has also recorded 18 collaborative albums.

5. Barbara Streisand
   The first person to earn an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), Streisand is a generational talent with a gorgeous voice whose first album, 1963’s The Barbra Streisand Album, earned her the Album of the Year Grammy. Her albums have topped the charts 11 times, including 1974’s The Way We Were.

“The Way We Were” single also hit No. 1, as did four of her other singles: “Evergreen,” the Neil Diamond duet “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” with Donna Summer and “Woman in Love.” She won the Best Original Song Oscar for “A Star Is Born” in 1976, becoming the first woman composer to be honored. Billboard named Streisand the greatest Billboard 200 solo artist, and she’s sold 150 million albums. She has released 36 albums, the most recent in 2018.

4. Joni Mitchell
   Dubbed one of the greatest songwriters ever by Rolling Stone, Mitchell won 11 Grammys and earned a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Canadian moved to the United States and started touring in the mid 1960s, releasing debut album Song to a Seagull in 1968.

Mitchell hit her stride in 1971 with Blue, named to Rolling Stone’s best 500 albums of all time and as NPR’s top album made by a woman. Its singles included “A Case of You” and “This Flight Tonight.” In the mid-1970s, she started collaborating with jazz musicians including Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus and Wayne Shorter. She became a political activist in her later years, and in 2002, she won the Lifetime Achievement Grammy. Mitchell, who released 19 albums, made a surprise appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2022, but she hasn’t had an album since 2007.

3. Aretha Franklin
   The Queen of Soul, once dubbed the greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone, signed with Columbia Records at 18 and later with Atlantic, where she put out four albums in the 70s: Spirit in the Dark; Young, Gifted and Black; Amazing Grace and Sparkle.

Throughout her career, she had 112 singles on the Billboard charts and sold more than 75 million albums. Some of her greatest hits include “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Chain of Fools,” “Spanish Harlem” and “Rock Steady.” Her 18 Grammys include an incredible eight straight victories from 1968-1975 for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. She was the first female artist inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Franklin recorded 39 albums, the final one released in 2014, four years before her death.

2. Diana Ross
   Ross is a rarity: a member of one of the all-time greatest groups who also went on to a tremendous solo career. She headlined The Supremes, one of the best-selling girl groups ever with 12 Billboard No. 1 hits, and earned the nickname Queen of Motown Records. Ross went solo in 1970.

She subsequently released 26 solo albums, with smashes including “Love Hangover,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Upside Down,” and “Endless Love,” all of which hit No. 1. At the time, she was the most successful female act ever. The soundtrack to Lady Sings the Blues, for which she earned an Oscar nod, hit No. 1 in 1972, and she headlined the popular movie The Wiz. Billboard dubbed her Entertainer of the Century in 1976, and she’s the only woman to earn two Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards (one solo, one for the Supremes).

1. Tina Turner
   The Queen of Rock ‘n Roll left her abusive husband, with whom she’d had a successful career, and became an even bigger solo artist, eventually winning 12 Grammys and selling more than 100 million albums. She broke cultural barriers, too, becoming the first Black woman on Rolling Stone’s cover.

The first woman to generate $100 million in concert sales, Turner got her start performing at nightclubs in the late 1950s. She met future husband Ike Turner, who made her a featured singer in his band, and her first single with Ike, “A Fool in Love,” shot to No. 2 on the Hot R&B Sides chart. The duo became more successful into the 1970s, with “Proud Mary” becoming their signature song in 1971.

Turner gave a much-lauded performance as Acid Queen in The Who’s Tommy in London, and she left Ike in 1976 to embark on a huge solo career that included “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” She released nine solo albums and 22 with Ike, and she passed away in 2023.

Bottom Line

The women on this list represent the peak of pop, rock, country and R&B music in the ’70s. They were all huge talents with equally huge voices who sold millions of albums and engineered thousands of hits. They were also savvy businesswomen who changed the industry. Check out their hits today.