Courtney Love is slamming the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for “sexist gatekeeping” while protesting the shortage of female and black artists highlighted by the Cleveland-based organization.
“In that case few women are being inducted into the Rock Hall, then the nominating committee is broken,” Love wrote in a scathing op-ed published Friday in The Guardian.
“In that case few Black artists, so few women of color, are being inducted, then the voting process must be overhauled. Music is a lifeforce that’s always evolving — they usually can’t sustain.”
The 58-year-old “Miss Narcissist” singer’s damning essay lists industry pioneers and visionaries like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chaka Khan, and Kate Bush as women who’ve been neglected for years by the Rock Hall’s nominating board and voting body.
Love noted that Bush, for instance, received her fourth HOF nomination last month, despite being eligible in 2004.
Chaka Khan was honored in Times Square on Oct. 25. Getty Images
“That yr, Prince was inducted — deservedly, in his first yr of eligibility — together with Jackson Browne, ZZ Top, Traffic, Bob Seger, the Dells, and George Harrison,” Love wrote.
“The Rock Hall’s co-founder and then-chairman Jann Wenner (also the co-founder of Rolling Stone) was inducted himself. But Bush didn’t make it on the ballot until 2018 — and still she is just not in.”
The Post has contacted reps for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for comment.
The Rock Hall formed in 1983. Artists change into eligible for induction 25 years after the discharge of their first industrial recording. Nominee ballots are sent to a global voting body of greater than 1,000 artists, historians, and members of the music industry.
Kate Bush attends a champagne reception on the sixtieth London Evening Standard Theatre Awards on the London Palladium on Nov. 30, 2014. Getty Images
Because of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” Bush’s 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” got a second life and expanded her influence to a recent generation of fans.
“Never mind that she was the primary woman in pop history to have written every track on a million-selling debut,” Love added of Bush and her 1978 album “The Kick Inside.”
“It took the Rock Hall 30-plus years to induct Nina Simone and Carole King,” she continued. “Linda Ronstadt released her debut in 1969 and have become the primary woman to headline stadiums, yet she was inducted alongside Nirvana in 2014.”
She added: “Most egregiously, Tina Turner was inducted as a solo artist three many years after making the grade alongside her abuser, Ike.”
Love — the previous lead vocalist for Hole and the widow of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain — also claimed only 8.48% of the Rock Hall’s inductees and just nine of its board’s 31 members are women.
“Why are women so marginalized by the Rock Hall? …” she asked. “The Rock Hall’s canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but in addition purposeful ignorance and hostility.”
Inductee Carole King performs onstage throughout the thirty sixth Annual Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony on Oct. 30, 2021 in Cleveland, Ohio.Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
“Induction affects artists’ ticket prices, their performance guarantees, the standard of their reissue campaigns (in the event that they get reissued in any respect),” Love reasoned. “These opportunities are life-changing — the difference between touring secondary-market casinos opening for a second-rate comedian, or headlining respected festivals.”
Love also argued the 2023 nominations, revealed in early February, “offered the annual reminder of just how extraordinary a lady have to be to make it into the ol’ boys club” as more women than ever were included on this yr’s nomination class.
Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow, Meg White of the White Stripes, and Gillian Gilbert of Recent Order are potential inductees.
“If the Rock Hall is just not willing to take a look at the ways it’s replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face within the music industry, if it cannot properly honor what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionized and contributed to popular music — well, then let it go to hell in a handbag,” Love concluded.
She shared the article to Instagram on Friday, tagging The Guardian and claiming: “@guardian censored my line ‘RUN BY A GOVERNING BOARD MADE UP OF MUSIC’S MOST MALEVOLENT, A VIRTUAL BLACK HOLE OF THE HELLISH.’”
She continued: “I never used the word ‘marginalized’ applied to 51 percent of the worlds population (censored by a lady! Is that this why people use substack?),” she asked of the favored blogging platform.
The Post has contacted reps for Love and The Guardian for comment.
