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You Betta Saaang, Sista! Vol. 1

Fifty-one tracks with one criterion: the woman singing has to be able to sing. Not stylise, not emote — sing.

A playlist about technique

The title is an instruction and a verdict, and the selections take it seriously. What is assembled here is not a survey of great female vocalists in general but of a specific thing — the gospel-rooted, technically formidable, control-and-power tradition that runs through American soul and its descendants.

It spans jazz, gospel, R&B, reggae and contemporary soul, which is the right decision. The technique in question does not respect genre boundaries, and hearing Ella Fitzgerald next to Emeli Sandé next to CeCe Winans makes the continuity obvious.

What to listen for

Vesta Williams' "Sweet Sweet Love" is the deep cut that vindicates the whole exercise. Vesta had a four-octave range and never got the career it warranted; she died in 2011 and is one of the great under-heard voices in soul.

Kelly Price's "It's Gonna Rain" opens the set and establishes the standard immediately. KeKe Wyatt's "I Will Always Love You" is an act of considerable nerve — taking on a Whitney Houston arrangement is close to a dare.

Whitney Houston's "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" is the counter-argument in the same playlist: one of the most technically gifted singers alive, deliberately doing almost nothing.

The gospel entries are essential. CeCe Winans' "Fill My Cup" and Yolanda Adams' "Open My Heart" are where the whole tradition comes from, and Adams in particular is a technician of extraordinary precision.

Regina Belle, Chrisette Michele, Lizz Wright and Leela James handle the jazz-and-soul middle. Ella Fitzgerald's "Azure" is the elder in the room.

Sevana's "Carry You" brings Jamaica in, and Emeli Sandé's "Selah" and Joss Stone's "Drive All Night" the British side.

Lalah Hathaway appears with Boney James on "Coastin'," which is the polite version of what she can do.

Go deeper

Vesta Williams first — her self-titled 1986 album is the place to start, and it is a genuine injustice that she is not better known.

For the gospel foundation: Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward, The Clark Sisters and Shirley Caesar. Every singer on this list is downstream of those four, whether or not they would say so.

And Lalah Hathaway's Live album, in which she audibly sings more than one note at a time, is the technical high-water mark of the entire tradition.

One final observation about the criterion. The title says "saaang," not "sing," and the extra vowels are doing real work — they describe a specific thing that happens when a singer stops being careful. Every performance selected here has at least one moment of it. Listen for where each vocalist decides to let go; in almost every case it arrives later than you expect, because control is what makes the release land.

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