It’s February 2024, and the time has come once again to debate which part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s name is more important to artists’ qualifications — the Rock and Roll part, or the Hall of Fame part?
This year’s crop of nominees for the Rock Hall are once again largely divided along those lines. There are the obvious all-time music industry legends (Cher, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige) whose resumés are only questionable in their lack of major overlap with the more traditionally guitar-based rock artists whose presence still — for the most part — forms the institution’s core. And then there are the unquestionable rockers (Jane’s Addiction, Oasis, Dave Matthews Band) whose perhaps slightly less-expansive pop cultural impact — in this country anyway — leave them at a slight disadvantage in any kind of popularity contest with such mononymically recognizable pop icons.
And of course, it’s not entirely that simple a binary: In this year’s nomination class, we also have legendary bands whose success was more in the pop sphere than the rock one (Kool & The Gang), esteemed rap duos and groups without massive crossover hits but with a ton of rock-world respect (Eric B. & Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest) and singularly genre-blurring, industry-defying greats whose Rock Hall cases are somewhat puzzling just based on the lack of obvious precedents for them (Sade, Sinéad O’Connor.) Lastly, we have the classic-rock holdovers, Foreigner and Peter Frampton, who would’ve likely been laughed off the ballot 20 years ago for being rock-crit anathema, but whose songs have endured, and who are now close to the only credible boomer-rock representatives left to be inducted.
Confusing stuff, to be sure, but we’re here to help you try to make sense of it. Here’s how we break down the nominees’ chances to be inducted, from least to most likely, with approximate odds of their chances to actually get in.