Easy: Duke Ellington

Bradley Nowell. Sublime was so good, and none of the bands that have followed in their style have had the same lyricism that Nowell had, or have been able to really blend genres like they did to make something completely unique.

Orpheus. I bet he’d do great fronting a metal band.

John Lennon

Eyedea

Biggie Smalls

SOPHIE. Hyperpop hasn’t been the same since her passing.

Peter Steele

Chuck Schuldiner. Greatest death metal vocalist to ever live.

Nightbirde

Chuck Schuldiner, frontman of death metal pioneers Death, dude died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 34. I never had the chance to see them play live but their records are incredible.

Cliff Burton, Bass player of Metallica, died when the band's tour bus crashed and he was crushed underneath it. The band lost part of its soul and it took them a very long time to get over Cliffs death. Seeing videos of him playing live makes one understand what was lost, as he was an incredible musician.

On a more general note every artist that died very young, many made a big impact to their genre or even to a wider audience without it ever knowing.

Colter Wall, not that he's dead yet but im gonna save it if he dies before me.

Stan Rogers. Would pretty much double the number of available sea shanties

Piotr Grudziński of Riverside. It's clear to me their discography went completely different way than it could have after he died being only 41.

Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze

Bob Marley.

Max Bennett. He's not famous famous but he's well known enough in the jazz scene. He played with Frank Sinatra, Dizzie Gillespie, and recorded on countless studio sessions. I knew him personally and I think was his last student before he passed. Some people closer to him than me told me one of the last things he said was "I need to give jcabral9 his lesson" and it makes me tear up whenever I think about it. I was too young to understand most of his concepts--I wish I could know him as an adult and professional musician myself.

Justin Townes Earle.

FZ

Can't believe nobody else has mentioned him yet

Ricardo Iorio

JS Bach.

The only two I would consider otherwise are both alive (Lindsey Stirling and Amy Lee). They even have a collaborative piece 🎉

Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Sure, there are plenty of musicians who had a bigger impact on music as a whole, but NOBODY I've ever seen was more in tune with the universe than Stevie when he was playing.

As far as I can tell, he didn't actually play the guitar. He just acted as a conduit to channel music directly from the universe through a guitar. I don't think he ever once had to pause and consider what to play next when he was improvising, it just flowed out of him non-stop.

He had already started getting even better, having finally gotten sober, and it kills my soul every time I think about what else he could've given us had he not gotten on that helicopter.