Saturday, July 25, 2026

Rock Hall of Fame Ignores Popular Vote (Except for Doobie Brothers), Snubs Dave Matthews’s 1 Million Votes, Pat Benatar’s 800K, for Whitney, T Rex, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Biggie Smalls

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Only one of the top 3 vote-getters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s public voting will be inducted this year: the Doobie Brothers.

The top 2 — Pat Benatar and the Dave Matthews Band– have been ignored.

The other four who made it are Whitney Houston, T Rex, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and the Notorious Biggie Smalls, aka Christopher Wallace.

Three of those inductees are dead: Whitney, Marc Bolan of T Rex, and Wallace.

So why did the RRHOF have a public vote simply to ignore it? Good question. The answer is, they don’t care what the public thinks, and never did.

Not inducted: lots of people who should have been.

The whole thing stinks. Not only should Matthews and Benatar have made it in, but the Hall owed it to older groups or acts that are alive now and can benefit from the induction. I’m thinking of Chaka Khan, who’s far more Rock and Roll than Whitney, and the MC5, which has waited and waited.

But back to that fan vote: Dave Matthews received 1 MILLION votes. Benatar garnered 882 thousand! And they were simply rebuffed. If I’d voted in good faith on the Rock Hall’s site, I’d be pissed. If you did vote on the site, and are angry, you can sound off on our poll.

What idiots these people are.

 

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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