150 Biggest Snubs of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Introduction)

For all of the controversies that come with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the biggest is the amount of artists that are left behind each year and not inducted.  So many of the greatest artists in music, especially artists over the last 30 years, have continued to sit on the outside.  Now, with the Hall only having one class/group of inductees each year you can’t have every worthwhile artist inducted all at once.  But the Hall for almost two decades now has stubbornly had really small groups of inductees (5 per year since 2003 with a few exceptions), which has only needlessly added to the long backlog of snubbed artists.

At the same time, however,  the snubs, like it or not, are one of the biggest things that truly drives the interest of the Hall.  Controversy sells, and in the society we have today, having something to complain and be mad about is far more interesting than being content and at peace.  If a fan’s favorite artists are all inducted, then why is there any need for the person to talk about the Hall with such passion anymore?

Snub lists are a rite of passage, of sorts, for all Rock Hall followers.  We all make them.  My original snub list was made around 2011 or 2012 or so, which was at the beginning stages of the Hall’s decade long-catch up campaign on populist classic rock acts of the 1970’s.  For all of the controversy that movement has spawned on the internet and Rock Hall community, few acts in that category that have been inducted can be argued against.  On a personal level, I’m torn on it, as I too want more diverse artists inducted each year, not just for racial and gender purposes, but also musical styles and eras.  At the same time, I’m a classic rock guy at heart, and most importantly a music history snob, so with Chicago, Rush, KISS, Deep Purple, The Moody Blues, Yes, Electric Light Orchestra, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Abba, and the Cars sitting on the outside for so long, it just made the Rock Hall look ridiculous.  It’s still ridiculous that the Hall is missing the Monkees, Carole King, Tina Turner, Judas Priest, T. Rex, The Zombies, Jethro Tull, Bad Company, and Roxy Music (all artists you’ll see on my blog in the coming weeks).  So as much as the Rock Hall community wants more female artists, black artists, and artists of modern musical styles inducted, you can’t just bypass all of the aforementioned artists if you want to be credible.

That being said, my last list was quite out of date as almost half of my original list has been inducted and/or nominated for the Hall.  The last time I made my list, artists that debuted in the late 1980’s weren’t eligible yet.  Now we’re about done with all artists from the early 90’s becoming eligible and moving towards the mid 90’s.  Heck, we’re 2-3 years away from Jay-Z, the Foo Fighters, the Backstreet Boys, and Eminem being eligible (gosh we’re getting old).  So it was definitely time to update my list for sure.  But instead of going with the usual 100, I decided to up the ante and go with 150 artists.

The first part of the list is filled with artists that have become eligible in the last 2-3 years.  They’re snubs, but not quite on the scale of someone that’s been snubbed for 20-30 years.  So the artists are ranked on their musical merits and Hall of Fame worthiness, but most importantly on how long they’ve been snubbed.  This won’t be a list of the greatest artists in music history not yet in the Hall per se.  It’s strictly a list of who should be in the Hall by now, “for crying out loud.”   There’s some exceptions as a few of the artists in the top 10 are artists that were at their peak in the 90’s.  But the Hall has done such a good job over the last 10 years of getting the biggest snubs of the 60’s and 70’s inducted, we’re at the point now where the majority of the biggest snubs (from an artistic merit standpoint) are artists that were at their peak in the 1980’s and 1990’s.  In addition, some artists that I didn’t considered to be that big of snubs 5-7 years ago have moved up quite a bit.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting my snubs in separate posts.  After it’s all over, I’ll have a new Spotify playlist ready where I’ll have my the definitive song from each act.  After that, maybe I’ll do my usual routine of being the last prominent Rock Hall follower to post their predictions for the 2019 ballot, lol.  Until then, get ready folks.  Rock Hall season is upon us!