Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Ladies and gentlemen, the list of nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2022.

Oh, sure, some of these names make sense, but others just stick out like sore thumbs and leaving scratching your head.  A bland soul crooner like Lionel Richie, whose most exciting song was "All Night Long"?   Dolly Parton, who's stone country?  Noted great white hope Eminem, the performer legally known as Marshall Mathers, whose music is point-blank rap?  Dionne Warwick, who makes Lionel Richie sound like Little Richard by comparison? 

Even some of the acts here that could be undoubtedly classified as rock raise more than a few eyebrows.  Devo?  Those New Wave clowns who simplified social commentary into a song like "Whip It"?  Duran Duran, who watered down New Wave into mindless pop with song lyrics that read like a tile acrostic on a Scrabble board? Pat Benatar, who always sang about broken hearts and served as a sex symbol for horny teenage boys who were too distracted by her one-piece spandex suits to appreciate a real hard-rock queen like Suzi Quatro? 

And of course, the list is notable for the acts that are absent.  Still no Joe Cocker.  Still no Warren Zevon.  No Little Feat, and no Jethro Tull.  

Get used to it.  In this time of "wokeness" and "cancel culture," you can expect the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to continue to add more female and non-white and/or Hispanic artists whose music, however worthy it may be, fits a much looser definition of what rock and roll is, and several more worthy artists who have the misfortune of being male and overwhelmingly white get tossed by the wayside, much like white male Democratic presidential candidates under 75.  There are, I must stress, many female and Hispanic/non-white musicians whose music certainly is rock, and they belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame too, but as long as the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame lays aside aesthetics and style as criteria for induction and concentrates on identity politics, the protests of fans don't matter because the Hall has its own politically correct agenda.  Nominate Joe Cocker?  No, he culturally appropriated Ray Charles's style.  (For the record, Ray Charles is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he should be.)  Nominate Warren Zevon? No - too LA, too esoteric.  Little Feat?  No one cares about Little Feat any more.  Tull?  No, the folks who run the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame hate Ian Anderson's guts.

The truth is, the folks who run the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are by and large the same people who worked as rock critics in the seventies and eighties and consistently slammed and derided mainstream rock acts that are now considered "classic rock" and dismissed album-oriented rock radio as a formulaic radio format devised by conservative businessmen that allowed many a below-average white band to get airplay, which, they opine, never would have happened on a rock radio station that made playlists based on artistic and not commercial reasons.  These critics always hated seventies and eighties rock culture and everyone who merrily participated in it, thus producing Peter Frampton, prog, and heavy metal; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions of artists not thought of as rock by anyone connected to that culture are these critics' revenge on rock acts and fans they detested.  And even though the critics never liked Duran Duran, I assume they've been nominated because the Hall wants to tick off the classic-rock crowd, which hated Duran Duran with a passion.

And folks like comedian and podcaster Joe Kwaczala have no problem with any of that.  "I get a lot of sh-- on my podcast,"Kwaczala wrote, "for claiming the 'roll' part of the term includes genres like R&B, soul, funk, and hip-hop," he writes. "But I think I’m right, and it appears the Hall agrees: Acts like Whitney Houston, Bill Withers, and Jay-Z. have recently been inducted, to name a few. So cry as you might that they’re 'not rock and roll,' but the point is moot. The ship has sailed, and there’s no coming back. And honestly, if it’s a ship that's playing Tupac Shakur (Class of 2017) and Nina Simone (Class of 2018), then it's a ship worth being on."

If Kwaczala wants to turn this debate into a question of race - see who he listed there? - he's entitled to do that.  I'll be the first person to say that Bill Withers belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and an argument can certainly be made for Nina Simone.  But if Kwaczala's ship also makes room for white performers like Duran Duran and Madonna, plus any rapper you'd care to name, I'm going to head for the lifeboats.

Let's see who actually gets inducted.  I'm rooting for Beck, the New York Dolls, and Rage Against the Machine.  As for snubs like Little Feat and Jethro Tull, I'm inclined to believe that if they ever got on Kwaczala's ship, he'd push them overboard.