Outkast leads long list of Rock Hall snubs
Of the 15 nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2019 class, only a handful of acts – traditionally five or six – will be inducted. That means many candidates won’t make it.
Just ask Janet Jackson, Radiohead, LL Cool J, The Zombies, MC5 and Rufus with Chaka Khan. These names appear on the 2019 shortlist and all have been nominated in previous years.
Whether it’s their first year of eligibility or they’ve been vying for a nomination for years, these 15 names, all left off the list, could easily have made it on:
❚ Beck: This is the first year that Beck is eligible for the Rock Hall – his first album, “Golden Feelings,” came out in
1993 – and while it seems likely the Grammy winnerwill be nominated at some point, 2018 wasn’t his year.
❚ Blink-182: Another newly eligible
band, Blink-182 hasn’t seen many other bands of their
’90s pop-punk generation make it to the Rock Hall, save for Green Day in 2015.
❚ Bone Thugs-N-Har
mony: The classic ’ 90s hiphop group began planning their nomination campaign years ago, and considering the hip-hop genre is a relatively new addition to the
Rock Hall, their generation of rappers deserve recognition.
❚ Counting Crows: Grunge icons Nirvana and Pearl Jam already have made it to the Rock Hall.
❚ Dave Matthews Band: Similarly, DMB’s jam band brethren haven’t had a ton of luck making it into the Rock Hall.
❚ Depeche Mode: There’s a distinct lack of ’80s British new wave in the hall. But this year’s nominations of The Cure and Devo are steps in the right direction.
❚ Jane’s Addiction: With Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2012 induction and Rage Against the Machine’s nod this year, the next L.A. rock group of this generation to make the hall should be this one.
❚ Jeff Buckley: Can Buckley make it on the strength of a single album? Fans of “Grace,” his beloved debut and only full-length release before his death in 1997, would say so.
❚ Judas Priest: The influential rockers have been eligible since 1999.
❚ Kate Bush: Nominated last year, Bush may be more familiar to U.K. listeners than in America, but her hugely influential discography more than qualifies her.
❚ Nine Inch Nails: The band that made industrial rock mainstream, Trent Reznor and Co. have somehow never earned a single nomination.
❚ Outkast: Perhaps the year’s biggest snub of a newly eligible act is this one, though it seems unlikely Big Boi and Andre 3000 will be excluded for long.
❚ Sheryl Crow: Newly eligible this year, Crow has all the critical love and the commercial hits she needs.
❚ Snoop Dogg: Snoop took the stage at the induction ceremony in 2017 for a tribute to Tupac Shakur. It’s time that Snoop, newly eligible this year, gets his own induction tribute soon.
❚ Usher: Until Janet Jackson, long overdue, is inducted into the Rock Hall, there should be an honorary moratorium on any other R&B artists out of respect. That being said, Usher did become eligible this year.