If Nirvana is in then Soundgarden should be in. They should have been in before Nirvana
Absolutely not: Pat Benatar, Dave Mathews Band, Whitney Houston, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, The Notorious B.I.G.,
Probably not: T. Rex, Thin Lizzy
No (informed) opinion: Depeche Mode, Judas Priest, Motörhead
Not a fan, but might belong: The Doobie Brothers
Not quite making the cut: Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden
Absolutely in: Kraftwerk, MC5, Todd Rundgren
ETA: and Jethro Tull!
If 'Pac is in, Biggie needs to be in. Biggie gets in on whatever iterative ballot 2Pac came in on (first year, second, whatever it was). Call it the Popular in America Music Hall of Fame if you want instead, but that ‘is it rock and roll though?’ horse left the barn a long time ago.
I have no idea what the criteria are, unlike pro sports hall of fames, so I’ll try to make my picks an amalgam of: what I liked/listened to when they were popular, commercial success, critical acclaim. Oh, and older bands over younger. This is kind of a Lifetime Achievement Award anyway.
- Biggie if it’s his turn, otherwise Whitney Houston. Whitney gets in as selection #2 anyway.
- Judas Priest. Probably only get one of them or Motorhead this time around, and Lemmy’s dead already, Rob isn’t. Time to rewatch their US Festival set.
- NIN. Innovative, interesting, commercially successful.
- Thin Lizzy. Fun to listen to, great live, some commercial success. As groundbreaking as the MC5 or Kraftwerk, or Rundgren? Nope. Do I have those bands’ songs in my media library? (I probably do have Rundgren-produced songs there.) No. I do have Thin Lizzy’s.
- T. Rex. I don’t think we get glam without him. Which is maybe good or bad, depending.
Bands I ran out of room for: Depeche, Soundgarden, Motorhead.
Bands I think should get in w/o my uninformed vote: the Doobies, Kraftwerk, Todd, MC5.
Bands that will get in, but shouldn’t: Pat Benatar. Ask if this artist gets in if they’re named Patrick Benatar instead. DMB. Is Hootie already in?
Bands I don’t know enough about: Rufus.
That should be all of them. EDIT: this should be a poll, like the SDMB MLB HoF votes.
The continued snubbing of Weird Al Yankovic is a disgrace. Yes, I’m serious.
Anyway, I too am uninspired by this list. I guess Judas Priest, Whitney and Depeche Mode deserve it, but they’re not inner circle choices.
I would have also nominated Sarah McLachlan, who is at worst in the middle of this pack; her career has been at least as impressive as half these acts, and she gets a lot of bonus points for being the mind behind Lilith Fair.
Agreed. I’d put Weird Al in ahead of T Rex and Thin Lizzy.
For Ms. I Make People Cry For the ASPCA, she has 6 Billboard 200 Top Ten hits. Is that enough, compared to others on the list? Probably. And as you say, coming up with Lilith Fair helps her case a lot. Right, Mr. Geldof? Sure, put her on the ballot.
I can’t believe the likes of Pat Benatar and Rufus are nominated while the following acts remain snubbed (correct me if I’m wrong):
Bad Company
Boston
Chubby Checker
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Peter Frampton
J. Geils Band
Grand Funk Railroad
The Guess Who
Humble Pie
Jethro Tull
Carole King
Love
Mott the Hoople
Iggy Pop (solo)
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
Boz Scaggs
Steppenwolf
Ten Years After
Three Dog Night
Warren Zevon
I think each of these belong.
I don’t see any misses there.
I’m not sure which of those I think is a terrible miss. I’d put some in for sure, bvut at this point, the RRHOF has inducted everyone who is a no brainer (and is eligible.) No one on the level of Aerosmith, Eric Clapton or Michael Jackson is left out.
I actually think right now the biggest snub is OutKast, but they have only been eligible for a few years. Them or Weird Al, which is a hard comparison to make. Those are the first two acts I’d induct right now.
Depeche Mode should be delayed until we can induct them and KMFDM at the same time…
The one performer whom you list that I think is a huge miss by the Hall is Carole King, but I see that she was inducted as a writer (along with Gerry Goffin) in 1990. I suspect that the nominating committee figures that she doesn’t also need to be inducted as a performer, as well (she’s only been nominated as a performer once, in 1989).
And, yet, she has nine gold albums (including Tapestry, which is #36 on Rolling Stone’s list of the top 500 rock albums), and eleven top 40 singles, and is seen as extremely influential, in particular by many female peformers.
The distinctions between writing and performing and all that adds a strange element of confusion, because I assumed Carole King was in. And she IS in, as she should be. The idea that she is being snubbed by not being inducted again is, well, kind of bizarre.
Imagine, say, a Baseball Hall of Fame where you got into an argument with a guy who said Joe Torre should be in the Hall of Fame. In confusion, because you were pretty sure he was, you Google it and… uh, he is, so what the hell? And your friend says, “Yeah… as a manager! They should induct him again as a catcher!” (I am sorry to always go to baseball for my analogies - but baseball kind of invented the concept, and unfortunately, many of the errors of the Baseball Hall of Fame have been visited on all the copycats.)
Of course the RRHOF also gets into added levels of complication in that you have to induct groups as well as individuals; it would make very little sense to not have the Beatles in, but the honoring of John Lennon as a solo artist kind of has to be a separate thing.
Pearl Jam is in as well.
Smashing Pumpkins would likely be in if they had actually stopped in 2000. Putting the band back together with a bunch of hired hands and crappy albums diminished whatever esteem they were once held in.
Does anyone really count that sort of thing against a band? The Stones haven’t made a good song in thirty years, but no one seems to think that cancels out the preceding 25 years.
Every band and artist that doesn’t die of an overdose or in a plane crash earns the right to have a long period of making bad music or just playing old music in casinos to earn more money, and good for them.
To be fair, the Stones were already in the Hall of Fame thirty years ago.
Well, yeah. 
But if they founded it last year, the Stones would still be in.
I think most people who have read up on how the RRHOF works would agree the selection process is kind of stupid, and to a large extent is a list of artists Jann Wenner likes. If we had an SDMB RRHOF (which I’d prefer to call the “Hall of Fame of Popular Music” to get past that inevitable goddamn argument) and there’s a damn cool idea right there, the resulting list of inductees would likely be very different once you got past the inner circle.
It’s not that not writing your own songs should count against you. It’s that it shouldn’t count FOR you. It’s one of a number of considerations, and Pat Benatar largely doesn’t get that point. As has been pointed out, if you hit the other stuff super hard it’s not a disqualifier; Aretha’s in. It’s just a consideration.
The RRHOF wouldn’t be any worse with Pat Benatar in it, but it wouldn’t be any worse without her, really. She was a big star and had some good songs but I don’t think anyone thinks of her as a particularly important or influential musician.
I mean, if you listed ALL the popular music acts of all time - by any measurement you want - where is Pat Benatar? Is she in the top ten? Obviously not. Top fifty? No, no way. She isn’t in the top hundred. In Rolling Stone’s “top 100 artists” lists, 91 through 100 are Tom Petty, Guns 'N Roses, Booker T and the MGs, NIN, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Diana Ross and the Supremes (that’s kind of a cheat) REM, Curtis Mayfield, Carl Perkins, and Talking Heads, and Pat ain’t in that class.
We can now get into a largely pointless argument as to whether she’s 189th, 273rd or 814th, and Rolling Stone gets a lot of picks very wrong, but beyond the obvious fact that the Beatles and Elvis are way ahead of Pearl Jam who are way ahead of Herman’s Hermits, placing Pat Benatar somewhere is impossible to agree on. What I do know is that up to this point, there are 221 artists in the RRHOF (which includes the same person sometimes where and individual and a band are both in) and I am REALLY not at all sure Pat Benatar is one of the 221 best artists in the history of popular music.
Seriously? The Doobies were huge in the 70’s. Five top 10 albums, a bunch of hit singles… they were one of the defining bands of that era. They were also great musicians.
I was confused hy Dave Matthews band, but I looked them up and surprisingly discovered they have sold 34.5 million records - tied with Bon Jovi, Queen, and Britney Spears. Who the hell is buying all those Dave Matthews records? I thought they were primarily a ‘jam band’ good only for open air concerts in front of a bunch of heavily stoned people. Apparently, people listen to their stuff at home, too.
My personal disappointment is the perpetual lack of Warren Zevon. But given that he would have hated being in the RRHOF, and that he spent part of his career pissing off Jan Wenner, it’s probably never going to happen.
Dave Matthews Band were huge in the 90s, which was the absolute zenith of the record industry, in terms of album sales. I mean, not that they weren’t really popular, but X albums sold is less impressive in 1998 than it would be in any other year ending in “8.”
You know who the all time highest selling solo artist of all time, by album sales, is? EVER? Don’t look it up, try to guess.
Garth Brooks
90s all the way, baby.
I’ll hold your coat, pulykamell.
It’s funny, but when I think of Pat Benatar, my gut reaction is a “pioneer,” but when I stop to think about it, I have a hard time coming up with anything specific. Pioneer in that genre of rock that’s harder than Bonnie Tyler and softer than Joan Jett?
As for not writing her own songs, that’s a tough one. I see the point, on the other hand, the difference between Troy Aikman being in the football hall of fame and Andrew Luck (presumably) never getting in is in large part the people that made up the offensive line.
As for the Dave Matthews Band, I just file that under the “WWE Koko B Ware” rule…