Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley remains one of the most achingly beautiful voices in modern rock, a singer whose four-octave range and profound emotional vulnerability transformed covers and originals alike into acts of musical exorcism. Born in 1966 to the doomed folk singer Tim Buckley, whom he barely knew, Jeff emerged from New York's café scene in the early 1990s with a sound that fused Led Zeppelin's dynamics with Nina Simone's heartbreak. His only completed studio album, Grace (1994), failed commercially upon release but has since achieved canonical status, particularly through his devastating rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which became a cultural touchstone after his accidental drowning in Memphis's Wolf River in 1997, aged just 30.

Buckley's technique married precision with abandon: his voice could whisper with choirboy purity before erupting into rock howls, his guitar work traced from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's qawwali devotions to Robert Plant's blues mysticism. His death calcified his legend, transforming an unfinished career into an eternal question mark.