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"  Originally published in the May 2011 Music Issue It&amp;#039;s not about masculine or feminine. It&amp;#039;s about power, and passion, and weirdness. These days, American Idol&amp;#039;s gotten us so focused on &amp;quot;pitch,&amp;quot; but with some of the singers I&amp;#039;ve picked, it&amp;#039;s the delivery that&amp;#039;s most important. Being able to reach the back of the room or peel the paint off the walls or make somebody cry. To just hit somebody in the gut. That&amp;#039;s important. 1. Kathleen Hanna \u2014 &amp;quot;My My Metrocard&amp;quot; If you like Nirvana, you should know about her. If you&amp;#039;re interested in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, you should know about her. If you want to know about female singers generally, she&amp;#039;s the secret ingredient. If you go back and listen to any of her music, like her bands Bikini Kill or Le Tigre, this is a woman who&amp;#039;s smart and political but also funny and clever. She&amp;#039;s the Tina Fey of punk rock.      2. Joanna Newsom \u2014 &amp;quot;81&amp;quot; She plays the harp and the piano. But what&amp;#039;s interesting about her voice is that it&amp;#039;s a deal breaker: People either love it or hate it, and I&amp;#039;m always attracted to artists who have that kind of divisive quality. Her songs are influenced by classical music, early folk, and chamber music, and she sings about nature and love and heartbreak but in very unexpected, poetic ways. And she&amp;#039;s amazing to watch live. She&amp;#039;s like Jimi Hendrix on the harp.      3. Betty Davis \u2014 &amp;quot;Anti Love Song&amp;quot; If you&amp;#039;re one of those people who&amp;#039;s a little on the shy side, but you want someone to know you&amp;#039;re not a prude, a Betty Davis record can explain that for you. In &amp;quot;Anti Love Song&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;s trying to deny her most primal urges for a man she knows she shouldn&amp;#039;t love, and through it she&amp;#039;s just moaning and groaning. There&amp;#039;s a pain there behind her sexiness. It&amp;#039;s like there&amp;#039;s a claw coming out of her mouth.      4. M.I.A. \u2014 &amp;quot;Jimmy&amp;quot; There are a lot of people right now who are toying with the idea of mystery \u2014 Lady Gaga, for example \u2014 but M.I.A. is an actual enigma. She&amp;#039;s self-aware and toys with the notion of &amp;quot;Who am I?&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s actually singing about something meaningful, but she&amp;#039;s putting it in the context of dance and rap. It&amp;#039;s like looking at a bunch of bicycle reflectors; you&amp;#039;re just not sure what&amp;#039;s actually going on. But that&amp;#039;s good.      5. Patti Smith \u2014 &amp;quot;Gloria&amp;quot; The thing that people forget about music is what it actually means to be cool. Her version of &amp;quot;Gloria&amp;quot; is one of the best songs of all time. Her voice is soulful and scary.       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a9769/best-female-singers-0511/>