Interesting reading from Billboard, February 27, 1978.

Three Queens are there in top positions. I didn't know, Nancy Willson had that importance in the USA and it seems to me, that Joan Baez fell off her pedestal.
I don't know who they are : Bettye Swann, Lesley Gore, Mildred Bailey

Rock'n roll ruled the roost as time moved into the 60's and to a degree, femme performers suffered.
But with Vietnam and its ramifications came abrupt social changes. Joan Baez caught on quickly with her messages. Barbra Streisand swept in like a cyclone on records and in pictures. Aretha Franklin disseminated black music—based on blues—to a widening market, while Diana Ross, the Supremes and Nancy Wison added still more new converts to Black music.

Janis Joplin, Dionne Warwick, Bettye Swann, Nancy Sinatra, Dusty Springfield, Bobbie Gentry, Lesley Gore, Petula Clark, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Cargle King and Cher Bono. Melanie and Sandy Posey all prospered by serving up sounds and songs that restless American youth demanded Still, some of the old-timers were not torgotten. Records made by Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Kay Starr, Judy Garland, Doris Day, Mildred Bailey. Billie Holiday and Lena Horne still moved profitably... and these were artists whose careers had spanned 30 or more years. Garland, Bailey and Holiday are now deceased but Lee, Fitzgerald, Starr, Day and Horne are still around, healthy and, one presumes, still capable of churning out a hit with the right song, the right arrangement and the right label to promote it.
Now it is the 1970s, the tail-end ol yet another decade. The
names on the charts are different.


Will Linda Ronstadt, Debby Boone. Diana Ross, Natalie Cole, Streisand, Donna Summer, Thelma Houston and the remarkable platoon of other contemporary female recording queens of the '70s sustain their popularity until the end of the 20th century?
Ah now, that’s a question for which there is no answer, But we'll risk a guess as to the future: with the imminent acceptance by millions of music consumers of the videocassette and videodisk, tomorrow's song ladies will be forced to combine exceptional singing with irresistible physical attractiveness and consummate showmanship.