When I first saw Janet Jackson’s name among this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, I thought it was a stretch. Has she really accomplished enough for this kind of accolade?
A little research revealed how hopelessly ill-informed I was about Jackson’s legacy. Turns out she has a résumé every R&B performer would kill for. She has rewritten the record books for dance and R&B music — a genre I have never gotten into, which explains my ignorance in this matter.
‘Night Game’ is an odd and borderline silly song from the otherwise great 1975 Paul Simon album Still Crazy After All These Years.
This track recounts a baseball game during which the pitcher drops dead at a pivotal moment. I guess it’s about the triviality of things like sports in the face of mortality, probably as a metaphor for a lot of other things. But the seriousness of the delivery and the dirgelike music just make it kind of funny.
‘Return to Sender’ is an Elvis Presley track from the 2002 compilation 30 No. 1 Hits. At least that’s where it lives in my music collection. It was originally released as a single in 1962 and performed in the film Girls! Girls! Girls!, a clip from which is embedded below.
The song made it to only #2 on the U.S. charts but spent three weeks at #1 in the U.K. Indeed, 11 of the #1 hits on the compilation reached that pinnacle only in the U.K.
Our next 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is the British hard rock band Def Leppard, who have been eligible for inclusion since 2005. This is the first time they have been up for nomination, which is frankly shocking.
Def Leppard is one of only a handful of bands with more than one Diamond album (more than 10 million copies sold). Their company include the Eagles, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Van Halen, all of whom have been in the Hall for decades. They have sold 36 million albums overall, and every rock band in that ballpark is already in.
This year’s batch of new inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is varied and interesting enough to warrant a series of blog posts. In fact, looking back at the lineups from the past several years, I’m kicking myself for not doing this before now. Maybe I’ll start a new series and work backward. [Note: I ended up doing exactly that.]
Alphabetically, the first new inductee is The Cure. The English New Wave band has been eligible since 2004 and was nominated once before (in 2012) before making the cut this year. They released 13 studio albums in the 30 years from 1979 to 2008 and gave voice to a generation of disaffected mopers.
Meet Me In Montauk 