The Best Acoustic Bands and Artists of All Time
The backbone of music, regardless of your tastes, has always been acoustic music. Using only acoustic instruments (thus, no electric anything), this form of stripped-down music is one of the purest styles that's been around for a long, long time. Acoustic music has spanned many generations and can be seen across countless genres of music, including folk, rock (hard and soft rock) and even metal (if you count Unplugged performances). Believe it or not, many of the newer songs that you're familiar with have likely started as awesome acoustic versions by someone strumming notes on a guitar or playing chords on a piano. However, only a select number of musicians can be considered acoustic artists. For the sake of this list, an acoustic artist is defined as a musician who is primarily known for and plays acoustic instruments for a majority of their projects.
So what are best acoustic bands? Any top 100 list (or top 10 for that matter) of acoustic artists has to include the names Jack Johnson, James Taylor, Nick Drake, Joan Baez, Elliott Smith, Colbie Calliat, and Bob Dylan. These singer-songwriters are some of the best acoustic artists worldwide, and with good reason. Their songs were not only popular when first released, but also remain hit singles to this day.
That said, it's up to you to determine who the best acoustic singers and instrumentalists (i.e. guitar and piano players) are. This list answers the questions "who are the best acoustic music bands of all time?" and "who is the greatest acoustic music musician ever?" If you know enough about the genre, please vote based on the quality of the bands' music (albums and singles) instead of just voting for the most popular acoustic artists whom you might've heard of.
