I really wish they'd have called it the pop music hall of fame.
We white boys lived, breathed, spent hours and hours of time listening passionately to predominately white males playing music that was largely the antithesis to pop music.We spent so much money buying albums which were music statements that we listened to for the music, the lyrics or maybe the solos. There was depth and heft as well as volume not found on the poptones airwaves. I do recognize that rock is a black music form as much as it is white and it can have many iterations but it's the white boys with guitars that ran with what Chuck and Little Richard and Elvis created and after 1964 made it the genre that most people born before the mid-80s would identify as rock n roll.
Those black artists after Chuck and Richard chose to go into another direction which is fine and great music came from those choices but it wasn't rock n roll nor did they call it that. I mean some did but not many. They wanted to create their own sounds and styles: r&b, soul, funk. And why not? And why is that bad? Crooners didn't consider themselves rock n roll. Willie is proud to call himself a country musician-ss well as cosmic cowboy or outlaw country. NWA or PE were proud to call themselves rappers. Taylor Dayne, Sheena Easton, Kim Carnes knew they were pop or dance pop artists though Carnes started as country.
Now all this revisionist history is taking place with this continual moving of goalposts as far as who are rock n roll artists or what rock n roll is long after that discussion ended.
The sad thing is it strips away how hard these artists of the past worked to create and define their music genres. As any artist would to define their individuality.
That is what's being taken away. I'd love a non-rock artist to refuse their nomination proud of the fact they weren't rock n roll and equally proud of their own music genre-many that don't have a shrine built for itself.
Where's the R&B Museum? Or Soul? Or an actual Pop music HOF?
But instead they are being dubbed rock n roll for the sake of demographics to get people to continue visiting a museum which probably lost much revenue during Covid's peak.
Throwing shade? No, I consider your view absurd and you are entitled to it. As for Taylor Dayne she had about a 3 year run while Watley started scoring hits in 1977 with Shalamar. So no they are not equals.
Speaking of Shalamar, they were created by one Don Cornelius of the legendary Soul Train.
It wasn't The Rock Train or Rock N Roll Train no it was The Soul Train and it was a stone gas. Didn't need no Zep, no Stones (though it influenced their sound and look for a bit), or Yes (though Roundabout is pretty funky thanks to Chris Squire's bass). He was proud of the non-rock music they were featuring and promoting. It wasn't rock n roll and there was great pride in it being it's own thing.
Bringing all these blatantly non-rock acts just further diminishes the genres these artists helped build and defined themselves by but also warps what rock n roll is/was.
I'm half-expecting for someone to make the argument for Kenny G next.