John Cougar Mellencamp? Are you freaking kidding me? In the entire history of rock and roll they decide that the person most in need of honoring is John Freaking Cougar Freaking Mellencamp?
I think that every year I rant and rail against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Now you do need to understand the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has about as much legitimacy as the WWE Hall of Fame in that there is no real structure as to who is chosen. Basically while the inductees are officially chosen by music critics there is a lot of smoky back room deals going on where the final choices are basically determined by Rolling Stone and Atlantic Records (because they funded the damn thing in the first place). And much like you shouldn’t turn to Rolling Stone for music reviews you shouldn’t trust their taste in determining the best musicians of all time.
(On the other hand, the WWE Hall of Fame has improved in recent years in acknowledging performers who were never in the WWE proper. It still is biased as hell and if you pissed off Vince you’ll be ignored but at least they inducted Curt Hennig. That’s a start. Call me when they induct Rikidozan or El Santo though.)
Anyway, as you can see I am more than a bit irate in the nominations. Did John Cougar Mellencamp have hits? Yep, no question about it. In fact he had a massive amount of them when you think about it. I can’t even make many jokes about him as a human being given all of the support he gave to Farm Aid. The worst thing you can say about him is the damn “This Is Our Country” commercial that is seemingly played during every sporting event. So on the surface he has hall of fame credentials.
But do you legitimately think that twenty years from now anyone is going to give a damn about John Cougar Mellencamp? His music is nice and that isn’t what you want to memorialize. Let’s remember the daring and the challenging and the world changing. They’re inducting Madonna as well who definitely falls behind him on the musical scale but will be remembered for her image and self-promotion more than anything else. At least that is what a huge portion of rock and roll is about: it’s all about image.
Incredibly though there was one induction that floored me. They’re actually going to induct Leonard Cohen. Now that is someone who deserves to be remembered even though I don’t think he ever had anything that could be considered a legitimate hit. Heck, I’m not even sure if you gave the average listener one of his discs whether or not they would actually like it. But there is one thing that should guarantee his induction. He wrote “Halleluiah”.
It may be the best song ever written. Everyone covers it and no one sings it the same way. I’ll probably end up writing a master’s thesis on what it means. But it is just about as close to perfection as we can get on this planet. Here is Rufus Wainwright’s version (I’d post Jeff Buckley’s but Sony won’t allow embedded videos.)
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