India's Best Living Playback Singer!

For me..Lata Mangeshkar is the ultimate...no one can even touch her...besides her...I like Sonu Nigam and Shanker Mahadevan...Breathless by SM is truly something...

No. of albums

No. of songs

No. of hit songs- commercially/ recall value

No. of movies one sang in

No. of different music directors worked with

No. of live shows performed

No. of languages sung in

No. of diff styles and genre of songs

And yes National awards can be taken as a criterion, as it is the highest form of accolade in the country, given to the finest singer year after year. It is transparent, reliable and genuine as every year the award jury constitutes the greatest musicians of the country. It is not easy to get the National Award like getting some glitzy award like filmfare or the stardust award.

Difficult to say that Rafi sahab was the best, because Yesudas ji is superior to him in range. Rafi himself refused to sing songs like 'Shadjne paya' and 'Gori tera gaon bada pyara' because of the complicated variations in the songs and sujested Yesudas's name. No singer other than Das ji was bold enough to take 'Shadjne Paya' the song from the movie about the great Indian musician 'Tansen'. Das ji won national awards for songs in different languages including hindi, tamil, malayalam etc. Recipiant of highest number of national awards. After sometime he became reluctant to receive awards year after year and sujested that youngsters should be considered for future awards. Now which other singer will say something like that??

May be you are not quite familiar with his songs.

I listen to songs by Rafi sahab frequently. I am an admirer of Rafi sahab, Das ji and S.P.B and consider them the big three! They are the greatest male playback singers of all time. Each has some superior quality to the other. Difficult to say who is the best.

All are best at wht they do

Shreya ghoshal ( 4 National awards)

Sonu Nigam ( 1 National award)