4 American singers Bruce Dickinson is a big fan of

Growing up in England, Bruce Dickinson was naturally influenced by many British singers. However, throughout his career, he has also been inspired by and admired numerous American vocalists, not only from Heavy Metal but also from Classic Rock and even Grunge.

Over the decades, the Iron Maiden frontman, who joined the band in 1981 and helped turn them into one of the biggest groups in the world, has spoken about many singers from the United States whom he admires and has shared his opinion on their work.

4 American singers Bruce Dickinson is a big fan of

Ann Wilson (Heart)

The first one is Ann Wilson, the incredible vocalist of Heart, whom Bruce praised when he was asked during his spoken-word tour who his favorite female singer was. “The one that rolls off the tip of my tongue is Ann Wilson from Heart. Although she didn’t have the kind of — not charisma; notoriety or whatever of somebody like a Janis Joplin, an equally great voice and things like that, she’s just a complete all-arounder.”

Ronnie James Dio

The late legendary Ronnie James Dio is another American artist who Ronnie James Dio is a big fan of, having said he was one of his favorite tenors. “One of my favorite tenors (were) Ronnie Dio, (he) was kind of a hybrid. Obviously as he got older his voice was much more ‘robusto’ (robust). But if you hear him on some early stuff, particularly some of the stuff he did pre-Rainbow.”

“There was an album he did called Butterfly Ball (and the Grasshopper’s Feast). He was a guest on it and Roger Glover from Deep Purple wrote a lot of it and produced it. There’s a song on there called ‘Love Is All’ and his voice is like glass. It’s so transparent and it’s just amazing. I’ve always wanted to cover that song. Not necessarily on an album, but live,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview in 2023.

The album that introduced him to Ronnie was Rainbow’s second record, “Rising”, released in 1976. When he first heard “Stargazer” on the radio, he immediately recognized that it had to be a song featuring Ritchie Blackmore, his favorite guitarist, as Deep Purple was his favorite band. At the time, he had no idea that Blackmore had formed a new band. He was mesmerized when he first heard Dio’s voice on the track.

Bruce Dickinson said:

“For me, that was the record where I discovered Ronnie Dio on vocals. I was like: ‘Who is that voice?’ I was like 16 years old and go ‘What the hell?’ That’s Ritchie Blackmore and I didn’t know that Rainbow existed. It was on a little transistor radio in a garage. So I went ‘That sounds like Ritchie Blackmore’. I waited till it finished and the guy said that was Rainbow and ‘Stargazer’. (I went) ‘Aaah oh my God!’ It’s one of the shortest albums ever made, you know.”

“It’s like 35 minutes long, the whole album, but it’s a classic. I’ll take that over a 90-minute long boring yawnfest. Six really incredible songs that changed the face of music. It really did, that was a game changer. It gets not enough respect from people outside the Metal world,” Bruce Dickinson told Qobuz in 2024 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder

Two other incredible American singers whom Bruce Dickinson has praised are Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, two of the greatest Grunge frontmen of all time. “I was a massive Chris Cornell and Soundgarden fan — massive. (…) Soundgarden, to me, they were like a modern-day Led Zeppelin, updated and his voice was just the finest voice of his generation,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview with Loudwire in 2025.

Although he liked Soundgarden very much, he also praised Cornell’s solo career songs, including “You Know My Name”, which was the theme of “007 – Casino Royale” (2006). “(Modern day) singers overall (that I admire), one who is unfortunately no longer with us, Chris Cornell, was one of the finest voices I’ve ever heard of any generation. And sadly, he’s gone. The guy from Angra (André Matos), he’s also gone. So, all of these guys have gone, and they had the ability to really move people. They could yell and scream like the best, but they had the ability to move people with their voices.”

He continued:

“One of my favorite performances of Chris Cornell, to show just how damn good he was, was doing the James Bond Theme  (“You Know My Name”). That’s a great vocal performance. And funny enough, he shares that honor of great vocal performances with Tom Jones, who did “Thunderball. (I didn’t have the chance to meet him) in any meaningful sense, no. Not sit down and have a nice chat with him.”

“I mean obviously, Ronnie Dio. There must be something wrong with me that all the singers that I love unfortunately are not on the planet anymore. (…) The thing about Chris, for me, was that he had a greater emotional range than Ronnie, if I’m honest. (…) Chris Cornell was taken away from us before he’d even begun to give his best, I think. Very sad,” Bruce Dickinson told Songfacts in 2024.

Besides Cornell, Bruce also praised Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, saying he was one of the best voices he had heard in Rock in many years. “Best two rock voices I’ve heard in a last few years both have been from Grunge bands. It’s Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden,” Bruce Dickinson told Let It Rock in 2001.

Dickinson is a big fan of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and was heavily influenced by Grunge in the mid-1990s. That influence had a significant impact on his songwriting. It resulted in “Skunkworks”, arguably the most unconventional album of his career.