2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees

Here's the list:

Pat Benatar
Dave Matthews Band
Depeche Mode
The Doobie Brothers
Whitney Houston
Judas Priest
Kraftwerk
Motörhead
Nine Inch Nails
The Notorious B.I.G.
Rufus featuring Chaka Khan
Todd Rundgren
Soundgarden
T. Rex
Thin Lizzy

I've already voted for Depeche Mode, Judas Priest, Kraftwerk and Nine Inch Nails in previous years, so I'll probably vote for all of them again, and then Motörhead, obviously. If I wind up not voting for any of those first four, my runners-up are the Doobie Brothers and Soundgarden.

idk how you can have something called the rock and roll hall of fame and not include thin lizzy, t. rex, and judas priest

Subjectively, Todd Rundgren, and, to a degree, T. Rex (though they make more sense in a British Rock and Roll HOF--they weren't nearly as iconic over here).

Objectively: probably Kraftwerk for sure, Rundgren, and I can see reasonable arguments--usually around either commercial success or influence--for Whitney Houston, Motorhead, and maybe even the Notorious B.I.G. (although he wasn't around very long). I'm not that big on Rufus/Chaka Khan, although most people think they should be in. At least one or two or three of those strike me as silly; no need saying which ones, because someone will take offense.

One third of those nominees aren't even rock music.

True of a few inductees (Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, etc.). I've always said it should more properly be named The Musical-Artists-Embraced-by-the-Rock-and-Roll-Audience (Whether or Not They Actually Play Rock and Roll) Hall of Fame. But that's too many words, and people will think Alanis Morissette was in charge of naming it.

think it's now "rock" as in "rock & pop" as in "not classical or jazz" at this point.

They’ve always included blues and R&B artists. Now they’re including rap.

As I've said many times, they mean "rock 'n' roll" in the marketing-concept-meeting sense - "This new line of sneakers has that rock 'n' roll attitude our customer base has expressed a preference for in every survey." So rap, certain "edgy" country, electronic music within reason, Miles Davis, etc., etc.

It was never callled the "Rock Hall of Fame" tbf. Based on the artists who were inducted in the first year, it's not at all clear to me that Judas Priest is a more obvious descendent of those than Whitney Houston or maybe even Notorious B.I.G. xps

As I've said many times, they mean "rock 'n' roll" in the marketing-concept-meeting sense - "This new line of sneakers has that rock 'n' roll attitude our customer base has expressed a preference for in every survey." So rap, certain "edgy" country, electronic music within reason, Miles Davis, etc., etc.

They’ve always included blues and R&B artists. Now they’re including rap.

"The Postwar English-Language Popular Music Hall of Fame"?

Before we get into further discussions, can I just add that the rock & roll hall of fame was, is and always will be an irredeemably shit idea, and it should be bulldozed and never spoken of again?

Dave Matthews Band : Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Halled & Famed.

I don't know, I think they're less into honoring genocide denial than the Nobel committee.

Dave Matthews Band is gonna sail in tbh.

[xp] Yes but that won't stop me and others from being pissed when bands who deserve it are repeatedly rebuffed.

I don't think you can define it in a way that would satisfy anyone, Tuomas. Madonna is not rock and roll for some, for others she's the very definition.

Instead of announcing the nominees, they should just put out a press release that says, "We dipshittedly did not nominate Link Wray again this year."

Also, this may finally be Rufus's year.

And electronic music, apparently.

― Tuomas, Tuesday, 15 October 2019 13:52 (twenty-five minutes ago) link

i'll believe it when i see an electronic act actually get in

LOL @ DMB

I’m pretty catholic when it comes to RRHOF noms, but c’mon

Missing from the list in the first post: the MC5, who were actually nominated (again) this year.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/770246693/whitney-houston-notorious-b-i-g-among-16-nominees-for-rock-roll-hall-of-fame

I'm right on the fence with them both subjectively and objectively: love Back in the USA, not the other two albums; I think they're important on the punk timeline, but not as important as the Velvet Underground or the Stooges (or the New York Dolls, for that matter).

If Bon Jovi, Journey, and Def Leppard are in, Pat Benatar should join them this year. People forget how many big hits she had in the 80s, and they still sound great.

Wtf is this shit.

I'm right on the fence with them both subjectively and objectively: love Back in the USA, not the other two albums; I think they're important on the punk timeline, but not as important as the Velvet Underground or the Stooges (or the New York Dolls, for that matter).

― clemenza, Tuesday, October 15, 2019 11:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm honestly surprised -- even given how long and how rapidly the crapulence of the HoF has been on the rise -- that the 5 didn't get in earlier. They're easily as influential and important as the Velvets and Stooges, and were a big influence on the Dolls (and the Stooges, for that matter).

I agree, the exclusion of the MC5 does seem really weird. They mostly sucked, but they were inarguably influential. (Just like the Velvet Underground!) I'd like to see Grand Funk Railroad get in before them, but that's never happening.

I don't agree with the others but wouldn't put up too energetic an argument; the Velvet Underground, though, I don't think that's even close. You can't exactly quantify influence, but except for the Beatles and Dylan and James Brown, I'd say the VU stand alone.

The desire for more genre inclusion may be laudable, even well-intentioned. But as time goes by, I suspect hof noms will increasingly mine the same fairly limited pool of old material until insignificance.

People keep making music, of course, but there is no way to magically cause more music to have been made in 1964 or 1978 or 1985. Music history is a deep well but it is not inexhaustible.

So I will darkly enjoy watching this thread deteriorate as ppl discuss the relative merits of Fastball and Tiffany and Third Eye Blind

Foo Fighters are eligible next year?

They seem to be doing a fairly good job of keeping up with the times, not sure why they'd confine themselves to old material?

morrisp they don't confine themselves, no, but to me it looks like they try to pull something from Bucket A, something from Bucket B, something from Bucket C.

"O wait we need a neglected influential person who died in poverty and deserves long-overdue recognition"

"O wait we need a 70s metal act to make up for the years we snubbed metal"

"O wait we need an OG rap act to make up for the years we snubbed rap"

"O wait we need to recognize a disco diva to make up for rock's appalling history of misogyny and racism and homophobia"

"O wait we need a jam band or else we'll lose that audience segment"

"O wait we haven't gotten any synthpop in there yet"

Eventually it will all have to either (a) compress into only a very narrow range of eligibility, or (b) run out of good choices for every possible bucket.

I was very sad when the Doobie Brothers died in poverty. (I think your analysis is pretty accurate, YMP.)

T. Rex! Didn't think anyone so purely British would get in (only four Top 100 singles in the States, only one Top 10)--good job.

(Nine Inch Nails and the Doobie Brothers--kind of ridiculous.)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nine-inch-nails-notorious-big-whitney-houston-rock-hall-of-fame-937737/?fbclid=IwAR29TD0nirK884REeAlrGbmuvUlC35XZzwusQo62g43-spq5Z-L0bPoZGIE

Doobie Brothers give me a break

Pretty sure the HOF reasoned "If Soundgarden can't even beat Pavement in an ILM, we sure as hell can't let 'em in here."

*ILM poll

Nine Inch Nails making it over Kraftwerk is sort of incredible peak HoF cluelessness

better NIN than scraping even further down the 70s-80s barrel (the doobies at least have a couple of jams)

NIN totally deserve it, and them making it in before Kraftwerk, while wrong, is no worse than Depeche Mode doing the same this year.

idk how you can have something called the rock and roll hall of fame and not include thin lizzy, t. rex, and judas priest

― flopsy bird (voodoo chili), Tuesday, October 15, 2019 8:27 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

1/3 ain't great, but ain;t bad

NIN totally deserve it, and them making it in before Kraftwerk, while wrong, is no worse than Depeche Mode doing the same this year.

Agree, also have a hard time getting worked up about the more famous band making it into a Hall of Fame.

Doobie Brothers are more than deserving. Pete Townshend put it best...

“I’ll tell you who gets a good sound in the studio,” Pete Townshend of the Who once told a reporter, “The Doobie Brothers. Their songs seem to just pop out of the radio speakers and grab at you.”

Now they need to get Pat Benetar in. People do not remember just how many hits she had. Far more than Stevie Nicks.

Still very surprised Motorhead aren't in - they're pretty much the definition of a rock & roll band.

(along with AC/DC and the Ramones)

xpost I think there was some pushback because she didn't write or play on any of those hits, and she is not that great of a singer.

I'm sorry, what

imo. I like her fine, but I don't think she's as distinctive as Joan Jett or Stevie Nicks, for example.

I drove through Cleveland a few weeks ago w/ my daughters hoping to see the Zeppelin rig that was on display on the Met last year only to find that the vast majority of stuff from that exhibit didn't make it to Cleveland

When I asked why not this woman (also disapppointed) explained that while the building looks cool from the outside, making it a pyramid means the floors are too small to exhibit a lot of the things they'd like to :-/

We did however get to make logos and stickers for our imaginary bands and take turns thumping away in a drum closet

I love Jane’s Addiction for 2 albums (spread across three albums) but the idea that they are de facto better than the Banshees makes me lol really hard

Also, I’m a goth

i would say nin had a much profounder impact on rock and pop music than jane's addiction but also that assumes that any such criterion exists for the rock hall, which it doesn't, so it doesn't matter

"Influence" is supposed to be one of the criteria...

"supposed to be" being the operative phrase there

xo I didn’t say they were better or more deserving than the Banshees!

For a few short years Jane’s were just devastating live, on that tour in particular. Just a really intense, strange energy that I’ve never seen matched on stage.

I was curious about when exactly the RRHOF went off the rails (beyond “having a hall of fame for rock and roll”) and in YEAR 2, they managed to vote in Ricky Nelson before the Drifters or the Platters.

Why do we still have these arguments?

^^^^^^^ otm

xo I didn’t say they were better or more deserving than the Banshees!

For a few short years Jane’s were just devastating live, on that tour in particular. Just a really intense, strange energy that I’ve never seen matched on stage.

jesus christ

do we count Lollapalooza as part of Jane's influence? because then you could make a strong case they were as influential as any on the 90s...

https://external-preview.redd.it/iVGdNr7UjYsHE6u3VbLjLfnx2RVyKab96TqI_eYa5-I.jpg

How have the Banshees (and Joy Division, and The B-52's, and DOLLY f'in PARTON) NEVER even been nominated before ???

How many Country artists are in though?

Nine Inch Nails leaves me cold and I don’t care about this Hall of Fame, but I know this much:

In 2019, Reznor and Ross received songwriting and production credits for the number-one single "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X, which sampled their track "34 Ghosts IV" from Ghosts I-IV.[274] "Old Town Road" broke the record for most consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.[275] As producers for the song, Reznor and Ross garnered a CMA Award nomination for the 'Musical Event Of The Year' award, along with Lil Nas X, featured artist Billy Ray Cyrus and producer YoungKio.[276]

goddamnit every year i remember Blue Oyster Cult isn't in, what a bunch of bullshit

rt

It’s really bizarre that Depeche Mode and NIN (the aggro Depeche Mode) - both deserving - get in before Kraftwerk, but I guess that’s just sales figures. What I really wanna know is why Whitney gets in when Mariah Carey, a way more rock and roll artist at the end of the day and also objectively more popular, has never even been nominated. I mean, I know it’s because Mariah is still alive. But it’s still bullshit. And how was Outkast not even nominated? They’re a shoo-in, and they were eligible as of last fall.

Actually I’m pretty sure Outkast were eligible in 2018- “Player’s Ball” was a Christmas single. In 1993.

How is Mariah “objectively more popular” than Whitney? At a glance, looks like they’ve both sold between 200-250mm albums worldwide; can each claim impressive-sounding chart records; and have each won a ton of awards (though Whitney seems to have the edge there, as she apparently holds the Guinness Record for “most awarded female artist of all time”).

Having grown up with both, I feel like Whitney was always on a higher plane than Mariah in terms of status and perceived artistry. (Which is not to say that you are wrong about Whitney’s HoF honor owing largely to the fact that she is deceased; maybe that’s true, I have no idea.)

Also not sure I agree about OutKast being an immediate “shoo-in” upon eligibility, but whatever.

Postmortem, Whitney is bigger than Mariah if Spotify is the metric - which surprised me. I’m just talking about raw numbers with regard to hit singles and album sales. So I’m probably fudging the numbers a little bit. My read is that Whitney Houston had massive sales and basically no respect from critics before she died in 2012. Mariah Carey had equally massive numbers, equal critical disdain giving way to grudging respect in the late 90s and thereafter once she aligned herself with the hip hop nation. And once she went hip hop she never let go, never went back, never played it off like it was just a phase. She knew which way the wind was blowing.

To be fair I don’t think Whitney Houston ever had that luxury, whether due to colorism or any number of other circumstances beyond her control. But even if we’re limiting ourselves to the first 10 years of each singer’s career, Carey just flat-out had more good records.

Whitney still not getting a whole lot of respect, I see.

How is Todd Rundgren not in there? As a producer alone ... !

i want him to get inducted and then for the HOF concert, an all-star band plays a 23 minute version of "Bang the Drum All Day"

That sounds like work, which is anathema to the song's ethos.

it's not anathema if they're just banging drums

"Just" banging drums, gtfo with that. *You* bang on a drum for 23-minutes, it's hard work! There's a reason Ringo's All-Star Band tours with another drummer, and it's because Ringo doesn't want to work, because work is hard. Besides, imagine the drum union overtime fees alone!

Hmm. Maybe if they switched off drummers, and limited the amount of banging each could do? There are a lot of drummers in the Hall of Fame. That could circumvent union policy *and* prevent anyone from doing too much work.

*You* bang on a drum for 23-minutes, it's hard work!

he doesn't wanna work, he just wants to bang on the drum 'all day.' banging on a drum 'all day' is necessarily more work than banging on a drum for '23 minutes.' but that just what he wants to do.

You ever heard anyone bang on a drum for 23 minutes? It might as well be all day. There's a reason I love Led Zeppelin but never listen to Zeppelin bootlegs.

I played the role of the pulse for a performance of In C and I just played quarter notes like a robot for way over 23 minutes
it was quite relaxing tbh

yeah banging a drum for 23 minutes is actually quite meditative

that's pretty much my daily practice regime

xxpost But did you bang out those quarter notes, or just sort of gently tap them out?

i varied in intensity to create some dynamics, of course

that's pretty much my daily practice regime
i play drums for 23 min straight all the time honestly, it's not that big of a deal! brad otm

Lol at any of you taking this seriously. Love you all.

You dorks.

Todd Rundgren is annoying af

^must be an EMPLOYER

Proud of my nerdery!!
Regarding Todd Rundgren I had a teacher in hs who was a superfan and decorated her room w photos of him, which was no small thing in the early 90s. I never understood it but appreciated her enthusiasm.

Like I said before, he deserves to be in for his production alone! New York Dolls, Badfinger, XTC, Psychedelic Furs, Grand Funk Railroad, Meat Loaf, many of whom had huge or unlikely hits with him behind the boards.

As a solo artist ... "Something/Anything" is pretty cool, not that familiar with everything else.

I don't have the list in front of me or anything but I'm guessing if I looked at great rock producers who should be in the hall of fame who aren't Rundgren wouldn't be top 20

Yeah, but I bet many of them are in the hall already!

Though just looking now it seems that Eno isn't in, and has been eligible since 1999. So yeah, stupid rock hall is stupid, it's a no-win.

The Shawn Cassidy album he produced is tight!!

Rundgren