Well, they did have an album titled “Slippery When Wet”. Surely that must count for something.
That’s gonna be tougher to do as the generations pass. Consider a group like Wilson Phillips; is there anything that would make their parents uneasy?
Probably not, and the only way they get in my Hall is if they buy a ticket.
They get a discount in the HoF gift shop, but that’s it.
There is zero discussion for me.
100% yes.
And he 100% should be the Super Bowl halftime show.
Not that I disagree, but I think it’s becoming even less likely now than it might have been in the past. Not because of Al’s age, but because the NFL increasingly sees itself as a league and a sport with global appeal, and sees countries outside of North America as its “growth markets.” The Super Bowl has a global audience, and they are already selecting halftime performers based on global appeal.
As much as I love Weird Al, I suspect that he’s not nearly as well-known or popular outside of North America.
As long as Bob Dylan can get a Nobel Prize for literature, Weird Al can be inducted to the RRHOF.
And I’m quire serious here. I think that Dylan deserved the Nobel.
The bar for admission to the HoF keeps getting lower every year, so it’s hard to argue that anyone definitively doesn’t belong. Weird Al has had a long career and seems universally liked, so maybe that’s enough?
Playing devil’s advocate, though, he’s sold only about 12 million records, which is not a super impressive number in this context. One of this year’s nominees, for instance, INXS, sold 50 million. Usually if you haven’t sold a ton of records, the way to get in is to be credited as an influence on other major artists, but rock parody as a genre hasn’t really taken off.
I can see arguing that he’s a unique, beloved figure in rock history who deserves to be admitted on that basis, but by the usual standards of the Hall you can’t say he’s overwhelmingly qualified.
The fundamental problem is that the Hall admits about ten new members every year, and there aren’t ten great new bands emerging every year, so the quality of new inductees keeps going down. The solution would be to stop doing that, but if they feel it’s necessary to have that many inductees, I guess I’d rather have them induct great artists who aren’t really rock than rock artists who aren’t really great.
They also stuck Miles Davis and John Coltrane in there early on, then apparently lost interest in jazz…
This I agree with (except to nitpick that the Supremes were two years later). Look at the diversity of the inductees every single year from the beginning. The Supremes were inducted with The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and the Drifters.
The Beatles did scare some insane people at first, and so did Dylan. The others? Should Frank Sinatra be inducted? He scared a lot more parents than the Beach Boys ever did.
Did he? If he did, I guess you could make the case.
And I agree re: The Beach Boys. If Brian Wilson hadn’t been a genius who created a catalog of brilliant compositions, some of the most covered tunes ever, cited as an influence (for example by Elton John), a critical darling, I’d probably keep him out. But he moved the needle otherwise hella-enough.
The Beatles aren’t limited to any one category, but they are many things, among them rock and roll.
Weird Al doesn’t take himself seriously which is totally off-brand for the R&R Hall of Fame. I’m sure he doesn’t care if he’s given that now-pointless honor and can stand proudly beside, Devo, the Pixies, and the MC5.
Yankovic is a great performer in many different genres, including rock. As for “influence”, when other artists consider a Weird Al parody to be the sign that they’ve “made it”, that sure looks like influence to me.
But if they won’t induct him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, maybe they could at least induct him into the Rocky Road Hall of Fame?
I like Weird Al, I really do, but he does not belong the the Rock and Roll Hall of fame.
He wrote new lyrics to other people’s music, as a joke, some very good lyrics, but created no new music of his own. Nothing. Closer to Song Writer hall of fame, I might go for that.
And I am pretty sure that if anyone asked him he wold reply that he does not belong there either. His comedy IS entertainment, but it is not worthy of being in the Hall of Fame.
Can anyone find a comment from Al about this issue?
If that were true, you might have a point. But it’s not. He created plenty of his own music, as described by others already in this thread. In fact, he created music in many different styles and genres.
As point of (pointless) reference The Globetrotters are in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
As noted, this is factually incorrect.
Among my favorites:
Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White
You Make Me
You Don’t Love Me Anymore
Christmas At Ground Zero
Albuquerque doesn’t really do it for me but a lot of fans love it.
Don’t forget “This Is the Life”, the opening theme of the movie “Johnny Dangerously”, with the deathless lyric “I pay someone to chew my food, I’m an upwardly mobile dude…”
I dunno how much Al himself cares about being in the RRHOF. He seems pretty content with what’s he’s accomplished, and it probably doesn’t hurt that he has a rabid and very loyal fan base. Even on YouTube, where haters are everywhere, there are very rarely people stirring up shit about Weird Al.
I got a million pairs of shoes!
I dunno why but that line cracks me up.