Katy Baugh

Considering that most all of today's popular music -- be it rock, pop, dance or rap -- sprang from genres pioneered by black musicians, being all Caucasian about your songs is to literally betray your roots. To qualify as one of our whitest musicians, then, requires more than a pasty complexion, it requires a near-total disregard for jazz, blues and soul or, even worse, a complete whitewashing of them. Without further ado, then, here are 20 performers who put the you-know-what in honky-tonk. -Ben Westhoff

5. Radiohead
Go ahead and turn on VH1 right now. You know those bands playing in the background
of your favorite hot mess celeb reality show? Notice how they all sound like some pop
crossover version of Kid A? The prosecution rests. Radiohead went from being maudlin alt rock radio standard bearers to self-consciously difficult and avant-garde. They're currently the preferred artistic rock band for people who don't like artistic rock, with NPR-listening Volvo drivers everywhere lapping it up. -Nicholas Pell

10. Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton makes Jack White look like Son House. Dude tries so hard it's
embarrassing. Kind of weird, considering his pithy quip to a London audience in August
1976, "This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons
living here." Slowhand was drunk, but has never apologized for the comment; on the
contrary, he's repeatedly defended it. Nor has Clapton ever apologized for the 50 years
he's spent making bland, boring approximations of the blues for beer commercials and
the bar bands of Topeka. After all, nothing says "authentic blues" like the
synthesizer licks on "Forever Man." -- Nicholas Pell

15. Michael McDonald
A yacht-rock refugee, McDonald took the blandest elements of his former bands Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers -- smooth jazz keys, pinched falsetto harmonies, bass lines kidnapped from disco and beaten into funkless submission -- and used them to launch an '80s blue-eyed soul career so totally devoid of actual soul it was almost genius. Has any artist ever soundtracked more happy hour hookups at Chili's, or provided more fodder for banal wedding bands? Michael, we salute you. -Andy Hermann

Considering that most all of today's popular music -- be it rock, pop, dance or rap -- sprang from genres pioneered by black musicians, being all Caucasian about your songs is to literally betray your roots. To qualify as one of our whitest musicians, then, requires more than a pasty complexion, it requires a near-total disregard for the jazz, blues and soul music that came before you or, even worse, a complete whitewashing of it. Without further ado, then, here are 20 performers who put the you-know-what in honky-tonk. -Ben Westhoff

20. Celine Dion
In 1997, the world had Titanic fever, and French-Canadian chanteuse
Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was inescapable, especially on adult contemporary radio stations (aka where white people go to die). Dion's breast-beating rendition at the Academy Awards remains one of television's most disturbing moments, and her current residence at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas is proof that folks from all over the world have a near-insatiable appetite for bland fare. -Linda Leseman