Greatest female singerof all time?

Who's the greatest female singer of all time? Nobody leads yet.

Ten matchups, about a minute. Or just tap a photo.

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The table

Rating ± certainty · updates live

Pos	Contender	Rating	Win %
1	Beyoncé Most Grammy wins of any artist	1,500 ±350	50%
2	Whitney Houston Best-selling single by a woman	1,500 ±350	50%
3	Taylor Swift The Eras Tour, highest-grossing ever	1,500 ±350	50%
4	Mariah Carey 19 Billboard No. 1s	1,500 ±350	50%
5	Aretha Franklin First woman in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame	1,500 ±350	50%
6	Madonna Best-selling female artist (Guinness)	1,500 ±350	50%
7	Adele 21, a best-seller of the century	1,500 ±350	50%
8	Rihanna 14 Billboard No. 1s	1,500 ±350	50%
9	Céline Dion My Heart Will Go On	1,500 ±350	50%
10	Amy Winehouse 5 Grammys in one night (2008)	1,500 ±350	50%

Ratings use Glicko, a version of chess's Elo that also tracks how sure we are (the ± figure). Beat a higher-rated rival and you gain more, and the less sure we are about a contender, the more one vote moves them. On the real site the official table is recalculated from all votes every few minutes, so a matchup that gets voted on a lot doesn't count extra. Why a chess rating and not upvotes?

Missing someone?

Nominate a contender or back someone else's nomination. When 500 readers back the same name, it joins the field after a quick check.

Fair play

Nobody picks matchups by hand. Every visitor gets their own stream, drawn by a matchmaker that spreads votes across the whole field.

Least-seen first. Contenders with few matches come up more, so new entries get rated fast.
Unsure ratings first. The bigger the ± on a rating, the more often it gets tested.
Close contests. Evenly matched pairs tell us more than mismatches.
Wildcards and no repeats. One matchup in seven is fully random, and you never see the same pair twice.

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