Wikipedia defines Outsider Music as being "performed either by social outsiders, who have no or few associates in the mainstream music business, or by musicians who choose to live and work in seclusion, often due to compromising behavioral or psychological conditions."

That sounds reasonable to us - and here's our Top Ten.

10. Shooby Taylor
After spending several decades forlornly chasing a career as a scat singer, the self-styled Human Horn eventually made it as far as the Gong Show at the Apollo, where his joyous yet short-lived performance must surely live forever in the memory of those fortunate enough to have seen it. Taylor dropped from view in the early 1990s and died in 2003. A planned retrospective CD has yet to materialise.

9. Florence Foster Jenkins
Socialite soprano Florence Foster Jenkins may be the only musician in history whose vocal range was increased as the result of a car accident. An extraordinary singer, her ruthless disregard for the vagaries of tune, pitch and rhythm was matched only by an unwavering belief in her own ability. Shortly before her death in 1944, she sold out New York's Carnegie Hall.

8. B.J. Snowden
By day a substitute teacher, by night a singer of rare and magnificent gusto, B.J Snowden has been charming audiences with her unique vocal stylings since the mid 1990s, when B-52s frontman Fred Schneider played a pivotal role in ensuring that her debut album reached a wider audience. Touring is a family affair: B.J. is often accompanied on guitar by her son, Andre, while driving duties are fulfilled by her mother. In Canada is probably B.J.'s signature moment.

7. The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Sixty years old and still going strong, The Ledge is most famous for his unprecedented singing technique, a conveyor-belt stream of moans, groans, yelps, and hollers that has attracted a Worldwide fanbase. This includes David Bowie, who borrowed his name in the 1970s and more recently covered "I Took a Trip In a Gemini Spaceship" on his 2002 album Heathen.

6. The Shaggs
Speaking to a Norwegian newspaper, Frank Zappa described The Shaggs as the third best band in rock history. It's perhaps with this in mind that Alan McGhee released a compilation album from the trio on his Rev-Ola label during the 1990s - he had to invest all those Oasis millions somehow, after all. Equal parts lyrical naiveté and infantine musical ability, the much-rumored Shaggs motion-picture remains, at this point, just that.

5. Wild Man Fischer
Another musician to enjoy the patronage of Mr Zappa, the two remained close until Fischer lobbed a beer bottle in the direction of Frank's daughter, Moon Unit. If he'd been paying attention, Zappa would have never let the relationship this far, as Fisher definitely had prior: as a 16-year old, he'd been institutionalised after attacking his mother with a knife. Clearly unstable, the singer was eventually dropped by Rhino Records after turning up at the company store and bullying customers into buying his latest release.

4. Wing
Thrust into the limelight during an episode of South Park in which her voice attracted the attention of Sylvester Stallone, this Hong-Kong born New Zealander has come a long way since her early years entertaining the inhabitants of Auckland's retirement homes and hospital wards. With a stream of self-financed albums in her wake, Wing claims her mission is "to sing beautiful songs as they should be sung", and that she "spends 3-4 hours every day working towards this goal". Evidence suggests that this ambition is is very much paying off.

3. Wesley Willis
A 320lb schizophrenic with a large knot of calloused skin in the middle of his forehead (his traditional greeting to fans was a gentle, repeated headbutt), Willis rose to prominence after Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label released a 'best-of' album in 1995. This collection could, in reality, have been compiled from any number of the thousands of near-identical tracks that Willis recorded during his lifetime - nearly all had the same repeated keyboard riff, formulaic chorus and catchphrase: "Rock Over London, Rock On Chicago."

2. Jandek
Straddling the twin worlds of outsider art and avant-garde with equal fluency, Texan recluse Jandek had released close to 40 albums of spooky, atonal folk before finally venturing on-stage in Glasgow in 2004 for his first ever live show. Typically, the event was neither announced beforehand or acknowledged afterward, as if it had simply never happened. A recent documentary described Jandek as “one of the most compelling musicians of the 20th Century”.

1. Daniel Johnston
Everyone's favourite outsider cause célèbre, Daniel Johnston is a mess of contradictions. A writer of often beautiful songs, his own performances are generally shambolic, nervous and ham-fisted. Once arrested for painting fish on the inside of the Statue of Liberty, in 1989 Daniel survived a plane crash after wrestling the controls away from the pilot, convinced the man had been processed by the devil. The pilot was Daniel's long-suffering father, Bill.