Mick Jagger

Fearless, flamboyant, and paralyzingly cool, Dartford, England’s Mick Jagger all but invented the image of the rock 'n' roll frontman. At a time when the pop machine was bombarding the public with sanitized icons, Jagger embraced darkness, danger, and unvarnished sexuality, heralding both the liberations of the late ’60s and its destructive undercurrents. In time, he grew into a consummate showman—that strut, that pout—and made an art of entertainment, laying the groundwork for the likes of Bowie, Prince, and Justin Timberlake. (It’s no surprise that he had an interesting side career as an actor, working with heavyweights like Werner Herzog and Nicolas Roeg; he knew intuitively how to turn on when the camera was watching.) So broad is Jagger’s impact onstage that it’s easy to forget he writes the music, too, creating—both with Keith Richards and in a fruitful, intermittent solo career—a songbook that helped weave black American blues and R&B into the pop vernacular, moving with the times while somehow sounding utterly timeless.