With the recent triumph of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, it’s another personal best from one of Hollywood’s most noted entertainment icons of all time. By definition, it’s difficult to rank generations of top-tier talents, especially when comparing across all art forms including music, television, movies, comedy, dance, stage, and varied creative arts appealing to a wide range of humanity.
More often than not, the top spots in such rankings, subjective as they tend to be, are usually filled with musicians, actors, and actresses. Over at Ranker, fan pollsters are offering ongoing votes tallying their best communal conclusions on which artists deserve the highest consideration over the course of collective pop culture.
Note: Ranker lists are fan-voted, live, and continue to accrue votes, so some rankings may have changed after this publishing.
10 Aretha Franklin
Few entertainer icon lists would be complete without the Queen of Soul placing high in the ranks. Franklin was a songwriter, pianist, and vocalist whose albums had global sales of over 75 million units. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her ninth (twice) in no less than two greatest artists of all time essays.
Her roots in gospel led her to have an unparalleled vocal flexibility and perhaps the greatest mezzo-soprano voice in soul history, fully embodying the Black American marriage between spiritual, rock, and blues fusion. She received numerous honorary doctorate degrees from the highest accredited universities across the United States and her most famous tracks include Respect and A Natural Woman.
9 Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong is rightly considered the among the most influential originators of jazz, his career spanning over five decades and multiple evolving eras of the vaunted genre. Born and raised in New Orleans, he crafted the very foundations of what would become one of America’s most exported cultures, excelling equally in both trumpeting and vocals, his deeply resonant and gravelly voice defining his iconic sound.
Armstrong is often credited with being the first Black American to successfully ‘crossover’ into widespread popularity with white and international audiences. His signature scat-singing and trumpet balladeering became an integral component of the American musical landscape.
8 Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks is, as they say, as American of a staple as apple pie and baseball. Gaining his first notice in the now perhaps outdated sitcom, Bosom Buddies, Hanks went on to star in several of Hollywood’s best movies, such as Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan, Castaway, A League of Their Own, the Toy Story films, and Forrest Gump.
He’s won two Academy Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, and was among the recipients of the 2014 Kennedy Center Honors. It’s safe to say Hanks has become both a Baby Boomer and a Generation X idol of the highest accord and his body of work will easily stand the test of time.
7 Frank Sinatra
Old Blue Eyes was a shoo-in for ranking among the top 10 entertainers across American pop culture. The Chairman of the Board was the most popular entertainer in the world throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and his considerable music catalog has sold over 150 million records. He was Las Vegas’ unquestionable all-time residency artist and established himself as the bandleader of the Rat Pack.
Sinatra also crossed into the cinematic arts with fair ease, enjoying a successful film career and winning an Academy Award for From Here To Eternity. He won 11 Grammy Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Time magazine deemed him one of the 20th century’s most influential people.
6 Paul McCartney
Sir Paul is another ringer for an artist list of this magnitude. As the co-lead singer, co-writer, and bassist for The Beatles, one of the best rock bands in history, McCartney has easily made his mark as one of the all-time greatest composers and performers ever to hit the stage.
His musical talents are seemingly endless, what with his melodic bass play, his versatile tenor vocal range, and his varied musical style explorations over the decades. He is of course most infamous for his collaborations with John Lennon, but his solo career and his sting in Wings were equally impressive. McCartney has won an Academy Award, 18 Grammy Awards, and he earned a knighthood as well as incurring two separate inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
5 Clint Eastwood
It’s impossible to envision an American list of iconic entertainers and omit The Man with No Name. Clint Eastwood has been a constant presence in American cinema since his TV series Rawhide and came to international fame via Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western Dollars trilogy as well as his much-lauded antihero role of Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series.
Eastwood went on to embrace roles behind the camera as well, earning top Academy honors for his triple-threat work on Unforgiven as star, producer, and director. He’s won four Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, three Cesar Awards, and an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, and has provided pop culture with a significant lexicon of everlasting quotable quotes.
4 Robin Williams
The world certainly became a poorer place after Robin Williams passed away in 2014. Generally viewed as perhaps the greatest standup comedian of all time, consistently ranked along pioneers like George Carlin and Richard Pryor, his quick wit and improvisation skill was literally second to none.
Robin Williams’ astounding talent and versatility quite easily translated to the big screen, starring in classic tent pole Hollywood projects like Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets’ Society, Good Morning Vietnam, The Fisher King, and The Birdcage. Williams was nominated for four Academy Awards and received two Emmy Awards, six Golden Globes, two Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, and five Grammys.
3 Elvis Presley
The King will always be the King. Elvis Presley continues to hold the very highest regard among virtually all fans of all genres of music long after his death in 1977. He stands as one of the most significant pop culture influences of the 20th century, with his signature, one-of-a-kind fusion of rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and country.
He is often credited with being an integral component of transformative race relations, stepping across former cultural boundaries few white artists would before him. He sold over 500 million records worldwide and has the most RIAA-certified gold and platinum records of all time for any musical artist. He enjoyed a successful film career as well, starring in classic staples like Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas. His popularity with Ranker fans at the moment is also, no doubt, related to the recently released Baz Luhrmann biopic that surrounds the artist’s life.
2 Freddie Mercury
Some less musically inclined folks might find Mercury’s mercurial list-topping presence in these ranks surprising, but that’s probably because they’ve never walked into a dive karaoke bar in virtually the most remote places on earth. Queen’s global popularity was in large part due to Mercury’s status as one of rock’s greatest front men, wielding an imminently memorable and flamboyant stage persona in addition to wielding perhaps the most operatic rock vocals in the history of the medium.
There are too many Queen songs to count in terms of widespread appeal, but their most well-known anthem is of course Bohemian Rhapsody, which also was the title of one of the best rock biopics in recent memory, which also perhaps contributed to the performer’s popularity with younger Ranker fans.
1 Michael Jackson
Despite all the controversy and circus-level media antics surrounding his later career, MJ takes top honors in most all-time greatest entertainer rankings, not only with Ranker voters. Sentimentality goes a long way with latter 20th-century pop culture generations and Michael Jackson’s songs quite literally provided the soundtrack to the lives of nearly anyone born before the millennium.
The King of Pop’s career spanned four decades and set a number of unmatched records, including over 400 million albums sold, 15 Grammy Awards, and 39 Guinness World Records. His dance moves defined emulation styles for generations to come and his seminal album, Thriller, is regarded as the finest pop record of all time.
About The Author
