About the 2026 Inductees,  Sean wrote:
"Rock Hall is just controlled by the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine and Jann Wenner love punk/alternative/indie for a reason, because those assholes cannot play any instruments, just like the no-talent punk/alternative/indie acts, who were poor-level performers compared to true rock and roll bands!"
Yes, they prefer artists with unique songwriting in general over instrumental virtuosity, although there are exceptions (Jeff Beck). I remember there was a guy here a long time ago called Elastic Man whose posts were all deleted since they erased all the old posts before 2013 or something. I remember him arguing if I am not mistaken that the instrumental virtuosity of rock acts didn't come close to that of top-tier classical or jazz acts, so it's fundamentally and ultimately just a comparison between slick, well-produced pop acts and lo-fi ones, which isn't ultimately much of a difference. It seems what the Hall prefers really is middle-of-the-road acts who balance the two. They don't like arena rock much, true, but they certainly like it a lot more than any punk bands who didn't sell.
"just like the no-talent punk/alternative/indie acts, who were poor-level performers compared to true rock and roll bands!"
Soundgarden and Alice in Chains are more virtuosic than KISS.
"The Rock Hall should not only be really enthusiastic about inducting these punk/alternative/indie acts that are only heard by hipsters"
They're really not, especially in the last decade. If you're saying they've been inducting too much adult contemporary lately, you might have a point.
"38 Special"
Look, I like them but they were not very special (har). They got famous because their lead singer was the brother of Lynyrd Skynyrd's lead singer, and if you look at their songwriting credits, almost all of their good songs were co-written by Survivor's Jim Peterik, who was their secret weapon. Does that mean Survivor should get in instead? No, not really. I know arena rock purists think that they're just as good as Journey and Foreigner and they had a lot of hits at the time. The problem is they ended up not having any legacy. I have no idea why they never got any classic rock airplay considering how much they play Journey and Foreigner when they were almost as big and they don't sound much different but they've somehow been erroneously remembered as a one-hit wonder by history, so that's not happening either.
"Kansas"
3 lasting legacy hits, 2 important hits, not innovative enough for the prog rock crowd who would still rather see King Crimson, Jethro Tull, and/or Emerson, Lake, and Palmer get inducted (although the last would be a pipe dream at this point), not big enough for arena rockers who care about commercial success (who would probably rather go for Styx, REO Speedwagon, and/or Bryan Adams; they arguably weren't even as big as Survivor despite lasting longer on classic rock radio).
"Oasis and New Order, who no one knows in the US"
Lots of people know them in the US and while there will always be a US bias, global popularity should matter, right? I'm an arena rock fan. I like .38 Special and Kansas. Nobody cares about them outside of North America. And why are you arguing for them over Boston?
"Today, online platforms are filled with AI-generated music and fake data, so they're not reliable indicators of what people are actually listening to."
And none of the pop rock or alternative/indie acts being debated here used AI in their music, so who cares? Do you think Billboard chart data weren't also manipulated? We KNOW that they were because when Billboard switched from literally calling up record store clerks and asking them what was selling to measuring actual album sales by Soundscan, it turned out that alternative rock, country, and rap were WAY more popular than people realized, thereby helping explain those genres' boom in the '90s.
"Each one of true rock and roll artists were played 100 to 10,000 times more often than Oasis, New Order, the Ramones, or the Velvet Underground combines on terrestrial radio. Radio was the only music platform that really mattered."
In the US but you haven't told me why only impact in the US should matter.
"Even a third-tier true rock and roll act from the 1960s to the 1980s mattered more to people at that time than Taylor Swift matters to people today. "
Not true, even though I agree she's put out a lot of garbage, especially lately.
"Today's "big names" like Tame Impala, will soon be distant memories."
Doubt it.
"Just look at Lizzo,now hardly anyone even cares about her anymore."
She pandered hard to a specific poptimist crowd that praised any artists who sang about liberation, then the entire demographic she was pandering to ditched her en masse after it was revealed she was abusing her backup singers, thereby rendering the messages in her music moot and hypocritical. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
"After all, the only era when rock and roll truly dominated popular music was from the 1950s through the 1980s,"
You realize in that era rock and roll was just the umbrella term that included all artists including those in non-rock genres? Same way pop is used today.
"Meat Loaf sold 30–40 million copies of his best-selling album alone"
Meat Loaf MIGHT have a case. Probably a stronger one than most of the other names you've listed.
"He was basically the later-day Beatles."
pfffffft hahahahaha lol
"no more indie acts"
They've hardly inducted any indie to begin with.
"38 SPECIAL, STYX, REO SPEEDWAGON, KANSAS, TOTO, SURVIVOR, HUEY LEWIS & THE NEWS, GEORGE THOROGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS, GRAND FUNK RAILROAD and more are serious SNUBS."
Styx will make it, even though snobs will hate it. Toto SHOULD get in in musical excellence when also encompassing their session work, but not on the main ballot (just like how Jack Antonoff should get inducted for his session work but fun. absolutely shouldn't). Huey Lewis I could see randomly making it but it would have to be soon in this era when they're obsessed with relatively lightweight MTV acts.
"lesser acts like Frampton, Benatar, and Bad Company"
What? Benatar had more hits than all of those except maybe Styx and Boston, and obviously she was influential as one of the few female hard rockers at the time. Bad Company is one of the few arena rock bands that genuinely had cred if only because of Paul Rodgers's respect as a singer. I do think Boston is better than both of them and maybe Supertramp also, but not the rest.
"vanilla rock like Foo Fighters over Jane's Addiction or Faith No More."
Foo Fighters isn't ALL vanilla but I can see the argument that they've recorded more bad music than good. Still, their first two or three albums were good, which still matches those others' two longevity in addition to being way more popular.
"Rap music acts have such a low bar to clear to gain induction. Few rap acts would be inducted at all if they had to match the accomplishments of rock acts."
I actually kinda half agree here. I see tons of people talking about how rap music is being snubbed from the kind of people who think all black genres are being discriminated against, but that clearly isn't the case. Rap is absolutely doing better than any other genre at getting its major artists in over the time period of its existence (since the Hall in general has been biased against '80s/'90s/2000s acts historically). There seem to be way fewer major snubs here than any other genre or subgenre that existed over the same time period, and they made pushes to induct Salt N Pepa, MC Lyte, and Queen Latifah REALLY quickly while contemporaries in other genres are left out in the cold. However, I also kind of get it. The white rock audience had a bitter mainstream v. indie split in the mid-'90s, so most of the acts that became famous after that had minimal cred among critics, while most of the critics' faves never attracted a mass audience. Rap acts have gotten in quickly because they seem to be most of the names in this period who the critics and the mass public could agree on. |
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