Reply To: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2026 Nominees are Up for Voting. What Do You Think?

[MagicRuss]

There are a few problems with the RRHOF.

First is that it ceased being Rock and Roll and has made itself about popular music.

Second, and more importantly, they induct seven artists a year.   Because even if you do expand the categories to include all of popular music, you are going to run out of legends to induct and end up with a pretty mediocre list.

Third, the hall itself has some of its own biases and motives which don’t necessarily align with nominating the best.

Fourth, it’s the Hall of Fame, and not the Hall of Greatness.

Fifth, the voting is open to the public.  When you have Pat Benatar on the ballot and a huge number of people don’t even know who she is, that’s a problem.

As far as quality of nominations, I’m largely in line with Peter.  I’ll add the following:

Luther Vandross and Sade both have well produced music with exceptional vocals, but both are really just background music.

New Edition is pretty much the HOF trolling us.  They are a boy band from 40 years ago and even looking at their wiki page I can only remember one song and it’s not that great.

I don’t think Melissa Etheridge was groundbreaking but you could argue that she was influential or opened the door for a number of female acts that followed.

Pink on the other hand has no reason to be there.  The best 20 seconds of singing in her catalog are on a bridge in “True Love” where Lily Allen is singing unaccompanied.

Here are two people that I think need to be inducted:

Hank Marvin/The Shadows.  They mostly only had a few singles and mostly in England.  However, there are easily a dozen guitar players who are in the hall of fame who claim him as an influence.  Even Bela Fleck and Jean Michele Jarre cite him as influences, and without JMJ a whole slew of electronic artists don’t happen.

Glen Snoddy.  The invention of the fuzz pedal had a whole lot more influence on music than the last 10 or 20 years of HOF inductees combined.

 

 

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