Top 20 Musicians of All Time, in Any Genre: #5-1

This isn't a list of the twenty greatest musicians; it's a list of pop phenomena with a few actual greats of the Jazz and Classical world thrown in, to provide the illusion that you actually know anything. The inclusion of Madonna is an insult to common sense when Jacqueline du Pre, Leontyne Price and Alfred Cortot aren't on here. If you're going to write about music, focus on the music. We know the social impact of the Beatles; we're part of the society they impacted on and we don't need you to tell us how good they were when we already have shelves full of their albums. 

What most people DON'T know is the definition of a great musician, according to other serious musicians - subtleties in approach which mark an individual out as unique, subtleties which increase our enjoyment of music when we're alerted to them. What is there to learn from this list? Any man or woman on the street could have penned it. You owe me back some time.

Michael Jackson? are you taking the piss?

I had a ton of problems with this list, as I'm sure most people did, but really the issue for me comes down to a phrase used in the introduction:"Our team of writers listened to thousands and thousands of hours of music for this list"Writers don't know anything about music... musicians do. If you wanted an accurate list, you would have consulted serious musicians and then used your writing skills to make the list interesting to read. I realize this list is kind of supposed to be a joke, but I find myself very interested in seeing a list compiled by people that actually know something about music.

Talk to some rappers, a few rockers, some classical musicians, and a few Top 40 songwriters. If you include any critics, writers, journalists or fans, the list loses all credibility because it's being put together by people that have no formal or informal education in music. Watching a lot of movies doesn't mean you know anything about the construction, technicalities, or actual quality of a movie... you only know whether you like it or not. Eating a lot of food doesn't mean you know anything about it's preparation - or that you can have a real opinion of who the best chefs are.

Everyone can experience music and is entitled to their own opinion, but only those educated in a subject, in ANY subject, actually know what is objectively best. I watch a lot of House, but you're not gonna catch me operating on people any time soon.

At first I was like really all that time reading this piece this week to reach this?  I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy so after my initial reaction I thought it was pretty funny because whatever artist was picked as number one would not be the right answer for many.  For example, all week I've been thinking Sam Cooke should make the list and when I finally reached the top 5 I thought, wow maybe he made #1 but obviously he didn't but that is kind of the point.  My idea of number one would not be the same as others so for me, I'm choosing to make Sam Cooke my number one musician of all time since the spot was left open to pick whoever you want.  

all that work, only to end with a joke. was it worth it?

Prince was omitted.  Your list is broken.