Pat Monahan of Train distilled his vocal pantheon down to five names, pulling from vastly different corners of music history. Robert Plant sits at the top of his list, the Led Zeppelin frontman's wailing prowess unmissable. Ella Fitzgerald represents the jazz standard bearer, her phrasing and control setting an impossible bar that most singers chase forever. A hip-hop heavyweight rounds out the conversation, showing Monahan's taste spans generations and genres rather than staying marooned in rock radio nostalgia.
The picks reveal something about how Train's own frontman hears music. Plant's theatrical command probably resonates with someone who built a career on arena singalongs. Fitzgerald's technical mastery speaks to craft over flash. The inclusion of rap voices suggests Monahan respects vocal personality and presence as much as traditional technical skill, even when that presence operates in a completely different musical language.
These kinds of lists matter less for what they confirm and more for what they reveal about where a musician's taste actually lives. Monahan could've named five other rock singers and nobody would've blinked. Instead, he went searching across decades and formats, which says something about what he actually listens to when nobody's watching.