The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its 2024 class of inductees, which will bring eight new members into the Hall. They are Mary J. Blige, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest. Bad Company, of whom Foreigner is a slick, commercialized version, is still not in. Nominees Mariah Carey, Erik B. & Rakim, Lenny Kravitz, Jane’s Addiction, Oasis, Sinéad O’Connor and Sade didn’t make the cut.
Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick and Norman Whitfield will receive the bizarre “Musical Excellence” award, which is looking more and more like a sort of boobie prize for artists the nominating committee feels the larger body of voters will never pick. It’s defined as given to those whose “originality and influence creating music have had a dramatic impact on music.” Redundancy aside, aren’t they then virtually admitting that the main category has nothing to do with “originality and influence” and everything to do with sales figures? Halls of Fame are supposed to honor people of “originality and influence,” not shunt them into a side category.
Let’s look at the inductees’ totals of platinum albums. Two of them tied for the top number, 13 — the Dave Matthews Band and Ozzy Osbourne. One artist has only two — Peter Frampton, whose “influence” is mostly a technicality: he kicked off the trend for bands trying to break out via a live album. Cher and A Tribe Called Quest have 3 each, Kool & the Gang has 4, and Foreigner and Mary J. Blige tie for 8. (Bad Company has 5 — maybe next year?) It’s hard to believe that Carey, with 14 platinum albums, wasn’t inducted. Originality and influence? You really have to stretch the definition with most of these acts. It seems like the categories are reversed.
But do they really think that Jimmy Buffett (eight platinum albums) isn’t worthy of an induction for a body of work whose vast scope and influence (greater than virtually any of the main category inductees) has little to do with strictly “musical excellence” and everything to do with creating a distinctive style that catapulted him to superstardom? (And he should have been inducted in his lifetime.) Inducting the staggeringly influential but musically slipshod and non-selling MC5 (no platinum or even gold albums) in this category seems like someone’s idea of a joke — or was it a way of slipping them past voters who seem to be privileging the “record sales over influence” criteria clearly governing recent choices? And honoring producer/composer Norman Whitfield is a strong argument for bringing back the award for behind-the-scenes influencers such as producers, engineers and songwriters who don’t perform themselves. I don’t have much to say about Dionne Warwick except it’s time to straight up induct these people and do away with this category.
Alexis Korner, John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton will be honored with “musical influence” awards, once called “early influence” and awarded to non-rockers, mostly from the pre-rock era, who had an impact on rock music. Patsy Cline, who influenced more artists than any of these and continues to be a direct major influence on Americana/roots music to this day, is still not in.
Suzanne de Passe has been named the winner of the Ahmet Ertegun Award, given to a major figure in the music industry, one awardee it’s hard to argue with. De Passe, who is in her mid 70s, was a key figure in creating the Motown powerhouse in the ’70s and ’80s. She also served as executive producer of Showtime at the Apollo from 2002-2008.
Once again, the ceremony will be in Cleveland October 19 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. But in the future, it will continue to be here only every other year, going back to New York and Los Angeles in the in-between years, making the Rock Hall still the only Hall of Fame of any type that doesn’t host its own inductions regularly.
P.S. Don’t call the folks down at the Rock Hall to complain about any of this. It all comes from the national arm of the Rock Hall, including these muddled category definitions.