Prince

One of music’s true originals, the much-missed Prince Rogers Nelson doesn’t just rank among the world’s greatest singer-songwriters and virtuoso musicians, but he used his platform as an outrageously attired, unapologetically sexy performer to craft some of the most taboo-breaking, musically forward-thinking hits ever to grace the mainstream.

From his critical and commercial apogee circa 1984’s lavish Purple Rain through to his stripped-down Piano & A Microphone tour of 2016, Prince fearlessly embraced change. He was famous for his notoriously prolific output (his 39 official albums are reputedly outnumbered by the vast array of material still in the vaults), but quality nearly always kept pace with quantity. Revisited now, landmark titles such as 1999 and Sign O’ The Times still sound futuristic and otherworldly, while sublime covers of his songs, such as The Bangles’ Manic Monday and Sinéad O’Connor’s unique take of Nothing Compares 2 U, have already shown that Prince’s remarkable reign will continue forever.