Courtney Love slams Rock Hall’s ‘sexist guarding’, says ‘Go to hell’

Music

By Erin Keller

March 17, 2023 | 20:00

Courtney Love criticizes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for “sexist guarding” while protesting the lack of female and black artists highlighted by the Cleveland-based organization.

“If so few women are inducted into Rock Hall, then the nominating committee is broken,” Love wrote in a scathing op-ed published Friday in The Guardian.

“If so few black artists, so few women of color, are inducted, then the voting process needs to be overhauled. Music is a life force that is constantly changing – and they can’t keep up.

The 58-year-old ‘Miss Narcissist’ singer’s damning essay lists industry trailblazers and visionaries like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chaka Khan and Kate Bush as women who have been overlooked for years by the nominating committee and electoral body of the Rock Hall.

Love noted that Bush, for example, received her fourth HOF nomination last month, despite being eligible in 2004.

“That year, Prince was inducted – fittingly, in his first year of eligibility – along with Jackson Browne, ZZ Top, Traffic, Bob Seger, the Dells and George Harrison,” Love wrote.

“Rock Hall co-founder and then-president Jann Wenner (also co-founder of Rolling Stone) was inducted himself. But Bush wasn’t elected until 2018 — and she’s still not there.

The Post has contacted representatives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for comment.

The Rock Hall was formed in 1983. Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording. Candidate ballots are sent to an international voting body of more than 1,000 artists, historians and members of the music industry.

Thanks to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” Bush’s 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” was given a second life and extended its influence to a new generation of fans.

“Never mind that she was the first woman in pop history to write every track on a million-selling debut album,” Love added of Bush and her 1978 album “The Kick.” Inside”.

“It took over 30 years for Rock Hall to induct Nina Simone and Carole King,” she continued. “Linda Ronstadt made her debut in 1969 and became the first woman to headline stadiums, but she was inducted alongside Nirvana in 2014.”

She added, “Most glaringly, Tina Turner was inducted as a solo artist three decades after earning the rank alongside her abuser, Ike.”

Love – the former lead singer of Hole and the widow of the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain – also claimed only 8.48% Rock Hall inductees and only nine of its 31 board members are women.

“Why are women so marginalized by Rock Hall? …” she asked. “Rock Hall cannon-making smacks not only of gender control, but also of willful ignorance and hostility.”

“Induction affects artists’ ticket prices, their performance guarantees, the quality of their re-release campaigns (if re-released),” Love explained. “These opportunities are life changing – the difference between touring aftermarket casinos opening for a second-rate comedian or headlining respected festivals.”

Love also argued that the 2023 nominations, revealed in early February, “offered the annual reminder of how extraordinary a woman must be to enter the old boys’ club”, as more women than ever were included in the class. nomination this year.

Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow, Meg White of the White Stripes and Gillian Gilbert of New Order are potential inductees.

“If Rock Hall is unwilling to examine how it reproduces the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honor what women visionary artists have created, innovated, revolutionized and helped to popularize music – well, let it go to hell in a purse,” Love concluded.