This year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Snubs show is different from the last two. My 2021 version of the show started my obsession with the discriminatory practices of the Rock Hall. My 2022 version continued that journey down a road that still infuriates me at every turn with the blatant sexism present in the Rock Hall’s voting. The 2022 show presented a two-part exploration into dozens of artists who should have been inducted by now, with part 1 providing an emphasis on female artists and part 2 diving into artists I would induct if I was given total autonomy over the Rock Hall‘s management. I could have continued that type of snubs presentation, but at this point it is becoming the same show each year because the Rock Hall continues to snub all the same artists. They also continue to snub women. Also, the Faux Show has changed its format in 2023, so those old shows don’t fit the new format as well. This is why I’ve decided to focus this show on five blatant snubs and provide a more detailed argument. To do this, I am going to present evidence for each of the artists along with a side-by-side comparison of the artist with a similar artist who has already been inducted. This is not an argument that the selected inductees are not deserving of their induction. On the contrary, I believe the Rock Hall should stop their discriminatory, elitist methods and induct at least 100 artists immediately, including at least 50 women, and try to correct forty years of shameful history. Anyone who is already inducted is deserving, but not at the expense of so many who are even more deserving. Induction into the Rock Hall is not just an award. It is a commercial enterprise that allows an artist to advertise their induction, promote themselves as members, and increase tour and recording revenue. The Rock Hall admits that they are a private institution and not accountable to the public for their decisions. They are also a blatantly profitable institution. This is where the problems begin. No entity should be allowed to practice discrimination, but once an institution and its members begin to profit from the art they promote, they must be held even more accountable if their actions are discriminatory.

Before I discuss the five artists selected for this show, it is time to look at who did get inducted in 2023.

The 2023 inductees are: Kate Bush (finally!), Sheryl Crow (finally!), Missy Elliott, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against The Machine, The Spinners, DJ Kool Herc, Link Wray, Chaka Khan, Al Kooper, Bernie Taupin, and Don Cornelius. I’m not going to discuss any of them in detail. I’ll just say congratulations! They are all deserving. The one thing I will point out is that the induction of Chaka Khan for the Musical Excellence Award is a total cop out. The 2023 inductees for this award are Khan, Taupin, and Kooper. This means that Chaka Khan has been inducted for work like that of Taupin and Kooper, and not for being a singer who is at least as deserving, if not more so, than Bonnie Raitt, Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, Donovan, Donna Summer, John Mellancamp, Dusty Springfield, Missy Elliott, and dozens of other similar men and women. The Rock Hall is not filled with icons. Artists like The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Presley, and Ray Charles make up a small portion of the inducted population. It is actually filled with second-tier artists that most people know very little about, and the idea that Chaka Khan is not part of that group is ridiculous.

I will also provide an update on how it is looking for female artists. I think that the voters believe they are making changes in their sexist practices but that is just not true. Before this year’s inductions, 10.13% of the inductees were women. This year, 4 of the 20 people inducted are women. That raises the overall count from 10.13% to 10.30%. Using rounding, that is zero change. I already said this, and I’ve said it in every one of my Hall of Fame Snub shows. Until the Rock Hall drops their artificially created nomination and induction rules and inducts fifty women in one massive ceremony, they will never fix their sexist behavior. Even that won’t fix it, but you must start somewhere. Here is a list for them in case they aren’t familiar with the female artists they have snubbed: Alanis Morisette, Annie Ross (Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross), Bananarama, The Bangles, Betty Davis, The Boswell Sisters, Chaka Khan, Cher, Connie Francis, The Crystals, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Ella Mae Morse, Emmylou Harris, En Vogue, Fanny, Fiona Apple, The Indigo Girls, Joan Armatrading, Judy Collins, Karen Carpenter (The Carpenters), Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson (The B-52s), Keely Smith (Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Sam Butera & The Witnesses), Kim Deal (The Pixies), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), L7, Lesley Gore, Liz Phair, Lucinda Williams, Lyn Collins, Mariah Carey, The Marvelettes, Mary Ford (Les Paul & Mary Ford), Mary J. Blige, Mary Wells, Mildred Bailey, Patsy Cline, Paula Abdul, Queen Latifah, Roberta Flack, The Runaways, Sade, Salt ‘n’ Pepa, The Shangri-Las, Sinead O’Connor, Siouxsie Sioux (Siouxsie & The Banshees), Sleater-Kinney, Suzi Quatro, and TLC.

The argument for Mary J. Blige and Mariah Carey (Comparison: Missy Elliott)

It is time for some honesty. Before I started making the Faux Show, I had listened to virtually no music by Mariah Carey or Mary J. Blige. I am not going to say that I now listen to their music all the time, but I have learned that I should have paid more attention to them during the last thirty years. This is especially true for Mary J. Blige, who is one of the greatest soul vocalists of all time, and Mariah Carey, who is one of the most successful pop artists of all time. The main reason I have discovered the music of Blige and Carey is my research into this annual Rock Hall Snubs series. Every year that they are both egregiously ignored for induction, I am forced to go back to their music. Listening to their songs and reading about their history has taught me that not only are they arguably the most successful R&B artists of their generation, but their musical influence is expansive. The fact that they are women in an industry where female artists, especially those from the 20^th century, had to continuously fight against inherent sexism makes their success even more impressive.

Missy Elliott was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2023. She is heralded as the Queen of Rap because she was the first of the modern female rappers. At least, that is what I keep reading about her now that her induction to the Rock Hall must be defended. That is one of the problems with this sort of competitive landscape – once an artist is inducted, their careers must be defended in comparison to other artists. I am not going to argue against any of the wonderful things people have to say about Missy Elliott. If more women from the ‘90s had already been inducted and she hadn’t, I’d be arguing for her induction on this show. However, she is in before many other deserving women who began their careers before she did. More importantly, those women laid the foundation needed for Elliott to succeed. I’m not going to include Salt ‘n’ Pepa or Queen Latifah in this show, but I must recognize them as obvious snubs who were creating the female empowered rap that people like to claim was invented by Missy Elliott. The only difference is that Missy Elliott was able to take the groundbreaking work of Salt ‘n’ Pepa, Queen Latifah, and every other female rapper of the ‘80s and expand it into a much more empowered art form. At the start of their career, Salt ‘n’ Pepa were attempting to be heard in the most misogynistic landscape of any music ever recorded. Rap in the ‘80s presented no avenue for women to present themselves as totally empowered artists. If Salt ‘n’ Pepa had recorded the music of Missy Elliott in 1987, the music would not have been allowed to be released.

Mary J. Blige

This same argument should be made for Mary J. Blige. Leaning on the accomplishments of female rappers in the ‘80s, Blige perfected an artform that blended R&B, pop, and rap. She spoke from a female perspective that was virtually missing from pop music at the time, and even more so from R&B and rap. She took the sexuality of Madonna and empowerment of Queen Latifah and created the music that would allow the music of Missy Elliott to exist five years later. Blige was the first to produce beat-heavy R&B. She was the first to release an R&B album featuring a rapper on every track. Most importantly, she is one of the best vocalists in R&B, and her grooves are incessant. If you had asked me five years ago whether I liked the music of Mary J. Blige, I would have said I don’t know because I had never really listened to it and didn’t understand what it was. Now, I listen to her music more than I listen to Prince, Run DMC, and many other soul and rap artists who used to be my go-to when I wanted to groove down the interstate. Every year, rap advances toward a sound that has less and less to do with the original hip hop of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but that change does not happen overnight. Understanding the music of Blige is necessary to understand the evolution of R&B from the ‘80s to the 2000s. Over thirty years after she started, the influence of the music she was making in the early ‘90s is everywhere.

Raw numbers are not the only requirement for Rock Hall induction, but they are useful in a comparison of this type. In addition to her obvious importance, the following numbers show that Blige should have been inducted before Elliott. What is most striking is that Elliott recorded so few albums to be recognized in this way. That may be an indication of the importance of those albums, but it is still a small amount of material in relation to Blige.

Artist	# Top 40 Hits	# 1 Hits	Total Sales	# Albums	# Grammy Awards
Missy Elliott	21	0	30M	6	4
Mary J. Blige	22	1	100M	14	9

Mariah Carey

I feel ridiculous having to write an argument for Mariah Carey’s induction. She is the most successful R&B artist who has not been inducted, and it is not even close. She has sold over 200 million records. 200 million! That puts her in a different category of artist than Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige, and most other inductees, male or female. This is as many, or more, as artists such as Prince, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, and The Beatles. No matter what else I say, this is a time when popularity and success should be considered as evidence for inclusion. Carey is arguably the most successful female performer in pop music history. Period. We can all make arguments about the importance of artists. Perhaps Aretha Franklin and Madonna can be considered more important than Mariah Carey, but sheer popularity is important too. Timing is also everything. We are still living in a time when the success of artists in the ‘90s is not considered as important as artists from earlier decades, especially R&B and soul artists. Every year sees new rap artists get inducted, which is great, but it is starting to appear to be a bias that rap is the only worthwhile form of music for black artists to perform. That is clearly not true for artists from Prince and before, but the evidence does not lie when one looks at R&B artists who started recording in the ‘80s and aren’t either related to Michael Jackson or named Whitney. I don’t know why Carey has been snubbed for so many years. I assume it is a combination of reasons that are all nonsense. First, there is the aforementioned male-dominated bias in the hall’s voters. Next, Carey does not sing songs that are popular with the hall’s voters. I’m sure that few, if any, of them have ever listened to her music and enjoyed it. But that is also nonsense. She is a soul singer. If Aretha Franklin had started her career in the ‘90s, her songs would have sounded like this. I am sure that Donna Summer would have loved to have had a post-disco career in the ’90s that sounded like Mariah Carey. She is as deserving as any female performer of any style of pop music. Lastly (and this is the one that can’t be proved until someone finally talks to us all about the nonsense that goes on during the Rock Hall voting conversations), she probably angered the wrong person or doesn’t have the right people fighting for her induction. I’m not going to discuss her career in detail. She is an icon with more fans than any other artist who has been snubbed. Every year that she is snubbed makes the voters look like racist, sexist, ignorant, old white dudes who still think that Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones are relevant.

Here are the raw numbers, which are ridiculous in comparison to Elliott and Blige.

Artist	# Top 40 Hits	# 1 Hits	Total Sales	# Albums	# Grammy Awards
Missy Elliott	21	0	30M	6	4
Mary J. Blige	22	1	100M	14	9
Mariah Carey	35	19	220M	15	5

The argument for Ice-T (Comparison: Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.)

I’ll start with a few comments about the rapper Schooly D. Schooly D invented gangsta rap but he will never be inducted into the Rock Hall. Even so, every conversation about the music of Rock Hall members Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. must begin with recognition of the influence of Schooly D. However, Schooly D was so ahead of his time and so scary to the white media power structure of the ‘80s that it is hard to say how important he was in the future of rap music unless the artists he influenced give him credit. The influence and importance of Ice-T is not difficult to defend. He has always admitted that he was influenced by Schooly D, but he took the gangsta rap of Schooly D and turned it into an art form. He replaced Schooly D’s basic 808 beats and old school scratch and cut technique with state-of-the-art sampling techniques. He was a much stronger rapper than Schooly D, and for several years he rivalled Chuck D as the most important rapper in the world. I was a middle-class white guy sliding from teenager to young adult when artists like Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Schooly D, Public Enemy, and Ice-T were pushing rap from a second-hand musical style into the most important genre in music. I wasn’t listening to Schooly D in the streets of Philly. I wasn’t blasting Ice-T or PE in South Central. I was listening to this music on a Walkman as I walked across a college campus, surrounded almost entirely by white college kids who mostly listened to The Eagles, Steve Miller, Boston, and Jimmy Buffett. My friends were much more alternative than the average Jimmy Buffett fan, but most of them listened to The Cure, The Smiths, R.E.M., and U2 rather than gangsta rap. Some may say that this means I don’t have the correct perspective to write about Schooly D, Ice-T, or any other rap of the late ‘80s, but that is not true. While the message being presented by PE, Ice-T, and N.W.A. was aimed directly at people I shared very little with in terms of background or upbringing, I was part of a population that was buying tens of thousands of their albums. Ignorant, privileged, naïve white kids were listening to gangsta rap in the 80s as much as any other socio-economic group in the country. Kids like me, who worked at college radio stations across the country, were playing this music on the radio when black radio stations refused to do so. We created our own censored versions of the music on old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape so we could play it and not get attacked by the FCC. We had parties when a new PE album was released. We knew about BDP and PE long before KRS-One recorded a song with R.E.M. and Chuck D showed up on a Sonic Youth album. I can’t say for sure that this experience was true for anyone other than me, but I don’t often find that my experiences are special. I think I grew up like most kids my age with my background. For this reason, it is obvious to me that the music of Ice-T was as important in the evolution of rap as that of Run DMC, Beastie Boys, PE, and N.W.A.

Over the last ten years, the Rock Hall has made a blatant effort to induct rap artists. This is a good thing. The problem, as is the problem with so many of their decisions, is that they skimmed across the surface of the originators of the genre and moved on to newer artists before completing the induction of the older artists. Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. deserve to be inductees but it is hard to make an objective comparison between them and Ice-T. The easiest way to compare artists is to look at their success via awards, sales, and other measurable statistics. The problem is that Ice-T was making music when no one allowed rap artists to have a voice on radio, MTV, or other media outlets unless they sounded like Run DMC, The Fresh Prince, or LL Cool J. 2Pac and B.I.G. were able to sell tens of millions of albums, but only because artists like Ice-T broke down the barriers that kept him from enjoying that same level of success. What is important to note is that in a musical world that wanted nothing to do with him, he was still able to sell over 500k copies of each of his early albums. In the end, arguments about importance and influence are subjective and impossible to prove. Any research into 2Pac and B.I.G. will find them both named the greatest rapper of all time. They are both named as the rapper that introduced the method of low-key rapping into the genre. Listening to any rap of the 21^st century shows their influence. What I fail to understand is how the influence of Ice-T on all gangsta rap that came after his albums in the ‘80s is any less important than the influence of 2Pac, B.I.G. and every other ‘90s rapper yet to be inducted.

The Argument for “Weird Al” Yankovic (comparison: no one like Weird Al has been inducted)

There was once a time when recording artists were allowed to be funny and get recognized for their humor. The early days of Rock and Roll, R&B, and Country music were littered with artists who parleyed a sense of humor into marketable careers. Even the early days of rap found humor as a primary lyrical tool. I don’t know enough about social science to explain how society has changed over the last 75 years in a way that has made the popularity of comedic music decline to the point at which it is now almost non-existent. All I know is that at some point in the ‘70s, the world lost its sense of humor. In the U.S., at least, I’m sure it had something to do with the Vietnam War, the loss of trust in our government due to the lies and crimes of Nixon, the conservative destruction caused by Reagan, the resistance to female equality, political assassinations, and a dozen other political and social problems that still reverberate 50 years later. The ironic fact is that the world has never needed humor as much as it has needed it during the last 50 years, and even more so in the last 8 years, but this is the time when humor has been removed from popular music. Everyone is so serious now. Musicians are treated like politicians responsible for speaking out about their positions on every cause imaginable – racism, sexism, fascism, climate change, LGBTQ acceptance, and every other social issue. Sometimes they have something meaningful to say, but not often. It would be nice if musicians spent more time focusing on the joy of their music and less time on their social awareness, especially if they don’t have anything intelligent to say. Not all musicians are able to discuss serious issues as well as Chuck D. Usually they sound more like Justin Bieber (Google his quotes if you have a problem with this example).

Luckily, in the middle of the last 50 years of music as a platform for social awareness, one artist has provided over 40 years of ridiculous music and brought joy to hundreds of millions of people. When “Weird Al” Yankovic started his career in the early ‘80s, MTV was still an experiment, rap was looked upon as a fad that wouldn’t last, grunge was stuff you found around your tub, the Police and Queen were the biggest bands in the world, heavy metal was music for idiot American kids to listen to while smoking pot, and country music was still only popular regionally. The music of Weird Al was born into that world and has never stopped evolving over the course of his 40+ year career. Over those years, Weird Al is the most consistent recording artist of any style. If he performed any style of music other than what he does, his success would make him an obvious Rock Hall member. The fact that he is still a snub shows the indefensible bias of the voters. They must believe that what he does is not art. They must believe he has no talent. They must believe that anyone can do what he does, so why should he be recognized for simply making parodies. Here is the problem with all those arguments. If what Weird Al does is easy, why is there only one Weird Al? There are clearly a lot of funny people in the world. There are clearly a lot of people who want to make a living making parodies – you can watch the last 15 years of YouTube to see thousands of Weird Al imitators. Still, there is only one Weird Al. What he does is art. It is music. It is talent.

To put the career of Weird Al into objective facts, he is one of the most successful artists of his era. He has won 5 out of 16 Grammy nominations. He has sold over twelve million albums, the most for any comedian in history. He even has a #1 album (Mandatory Fun) and three Top 10 hits. He has performed over one thousand concerts and has performed regularly for forty years. Most importantly, he was one of the handful of artists responsible for MTV becoming a music media force. His presence on their platform was integral in the popularity of music videos, to the point at which artists were proud when he parodied their songs and videos because it was a sign of success. Weird Al is a national treasure and has never even been considered for Rock Hall induction.

The Argument for Connie Francis (comparison: Brenda Lee)

Most people couldn’t care less about whether Connie Francis is inducted into the Rock Hall. They also couldn’t care less that Brenda Lee was inducted in 2002. In the words of Lina Lamont in Singin’ In The Rain, “I ain’t people.” I do care, at least enough to write this Rock Hall snubs show every year. Lee and Francis are two of the first women to prove that female performers can be commercially viable pop artists. In the early days of the Billboard pop charts, they both recorded hit after hit and are still two of the most successful female performers in Billboard history. I am going to ignore the misguided belief that Lee was somehow a more rock and roll performer than Francis. You can go listen to their hits and see that they were singing the same form of pop music. If I have to take a guess at why Lee is in the Rock Hall and Francis isn’t, it would be that Lee is from Georgia and sometimes sings with a rockabilly twang while Francis is an Italian-American from Newark who sings like a female Frank Sinatra. As for their success and importance, Francis is more successful and more important. Connie Francis was the first woman to hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Connie Francis had more Billboard Hot 100 hits than any other female artist for 30 years, until Madonna released Hot 100 hit #54 in the ‘90s. As one of the first Rock and Roll era stars, Connie Francis is the woman who paved the way for all female singers to become hit artists from the 1960s on. During the 1950s, there were a few female hitmakers, and Francis was by far the most successful. At that time, the ability of a female artist to compete against men was virtually impossible, but Francis was not only a successful female artist but also one of the most successful artists of any gender. Since Madonna passed Francis’ 53 hits total, 8 more women have done so. To put that in perspective, Francis had more hits than any other woman for 30 years, and the last 20 years have seen her drop from #1 to #10 on that list. The fact that so many women can now record so many hits is due to Connie Francis smashing down the barriers that held women back for decades in the pop music world.   

I’ll simply present some objective data for both women as a comparison.  

Artist	# Hot 100 Hits	# Top 40 Hits	# 1 Hits	Total Sales
Brenda Lee	48	29	2	100M
Connie Francis	53	35	3	100M

Over the last twenty years, only Brenda Lee and Wanda Jackson have been inducted into the Rock Hall as female performers from the early days of Rock and Roll. Before them, the only women artists of the era that were inducted are all early R&B, jazz, and blues performers. On the flip side, there are dozens of men from the era who have been inducted, including many who were much less important or successful than Francis. This is an egregious example of the Rock Hall’s blatant sexism. It is time for artists like Ella Mae Morse, Keely Smith, and, most importantly, Connie Francis to be inducted.  

That is it for this 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame snubs show. The next show will present the latest additions to the National Recording Registry as part of the Radio Faux Show Series on The Registry. In the meantime, thanks for listening (and reading)!

I have, of course, created a playlist for this show. In addition to the five artists I’ve recognized as snubs, I’ve selected a variety of songs from the list of women who have been snubbed for decades due to the Rock and Roll Hall of Shame’s sexist biases.

Amazon Music

Spotify

Track List

Track	Artist	Song Title
1	“Weird Al” Yankovic	Polkas on 45
2	Mary J. Blige	Family Affair
3	Ice-T	I’m Your Pusher/Pusherman
4	Mariah Carey	Fantasy
5	“Weird Al” Yankovic	Word Crimes
6	Salt-n-Pepa	Tramp
7	Ice-T	New Jack Hustler (Nino’s Theme)
8	Mariah Carey	Someday
9	Mary J. Blige	Real Love
10	Rufus (featuring) Chaka Khan	Sweet Thing
11	Sade	No Ordinary Love
12	Diana Ross	I’m Coming Out
13	The Carpenters	Rainy Days and Mondays
14	Cyndi Lauper	Time After Time
15	Joan Armatrading	Down To Zero
16	Indigo Girls	Hammer and a Nail
17	The Shangri-Las	Leader of the Pack
18	The Crystals	Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home)
19	Connie Francis	Who’s Sorry Now
20	Connie Francis	Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool
21	Dionne Warwick	I’ll Never Fall In Love Again
22	Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and Sam Butera & The Witnesses	The Lip
23	Ella Mae Morse	Blacksmith Blues
24	Mildred Bailey	Shoutin’ In That Amen Corner
25	Boswell Sisters	Shout Sister Shout
26	Fanny	Blind Alley
27	Cher	I Walk On Guilded Splinters
28	The B-52s	52 Girls
29	Sleater-Kinney	Don’t Think You Wanna
30	Liz Phair	Stratford-On-Guy
31	The Bangles	September Gurls

32	Siouxsie and the Banshees	Love In a Void
33	L7	Pretend We’re Dead
34	The Runaways	Cherry Bomb
35	Suzi Quatro	The Wild One

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