Elton John has named Stevie Wonder as the artist he considers "out of everybody's league", offering effusive praise for both his character and his musical legacy. The comments came as part of Rolling Stone's compilation of the 100 greatest artists of all time, for which industry figures were asked to weigh in on their peers, giving John's tribute added weight given his own decades-long standing as a pioneering pop and rock songwriter.

John described Wonder as "an amazingly positive, peaceful man" and said he carries a copy of Wonder's 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life wherever he travels. He singled out Wonder's run of albums from the 1970s, from Talking Book onwards, as "unsurpassed in music history", and placed him alongside Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Ray Charles among music's greatest figures. John, himself an accomplished pianist, admitted Wonder's musicianship was "in a whole other league", suggesting he could have held his own alongside jazz greats Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, and concluded that Wonder was "so multitalented" that pinpointing the source of his genius was difficult.