Rock and Roll, By Any Other Name...

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, aka "whatever Jann Wenner likes," recently announced the 2023 class of inductees. Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott. George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine, and The Spinners will join the 365 that have been inducted since the RRHoF was established 30 years ago. Eligibility begins 25 years after the release of a first record.

Every year, the list comes out, and every year, people gripe about the omissions and snubs. Here's one list of notable snubs, here's another, and here's a third (some listed snubs have since been remedied).

As a heavy metal fan, I find it egregious that it took eleven years after eligibility to induct Black Sabbath, the band that spawned the genre and birthed over a hundred thousand bands. It's maddening that Judas Priest was only inducted last year, nearly a quarter century after they became eligible, despite fifty million albums sold. It's farcical that Iron Maiden, with a hundred thirty million albums sold, is not in. Ditto for Motörhead, whose singer/bassist Lemmy Kilmister was the most rock-and-roll person to ever tread the earth ("Lemmy is God").

Griping about RRHoF snubs is incredibly cliche, so I'll cease the grumble and get to the point: Even in allowing for some rock-ish pop songs within the "rock and roll" category, many of the inductees stretch the term "rock and roll" beyond its breaking point.

"Rock and roll" arguably spanned just a few years - the mid-50s to 1959 (the year "the music died") - before evolving into just "rock," but the lineage from blues to rock and roll to rock to all the rock sub-genres and evolutions is pretty easy to trace. And, with rock's roots in the blues, we might concede that the old blues legends would qualify. Genres such as country, hip-hop, disco, reggae, and jazz, however, shouldn't.

Besides, there exist Halls of Fame for the blues, for hip hop, for country, and five for jazz.

Things get a bit fuzzier when it comes to pop music. It's easy to say that NWA, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Nina Simone, Willie Nelson, Tupac Shakur, and Janet Jackson aren't RnR, but what about Depeche Mode, The Eurythmics, or Joan Baez, to pick just a few recent inductees?

How do we process all this? How is it that the RRHOF inducts all sorts of performers and acts that aren't rock and roll by any colloquial standard?

Rhetorical questions, of course. The RRHoF is a private entity and there is no patent on the phrase "rock and roll." So, Wenner et al can do whatever they want (and at the end of the day, it’s a business). Our options are, watch the induction ceremony and thereby "vote" in favor; don't watch and thereby vote "nay" or "abstain;" talk about it - in defense, in criticism, or in mere observation; or just ignore the whole thing. Clearly, I have chosen Option 3, sub-option 2, but I will also choose Option 2 by not watching it.

Why write about it at all? Because arguing about music is fun, and mostly immune to the Left-Right rages. And, most germanely, as a reminder that we can disagree about stuff without hating each other.