Courtney Love Criticizes Rock Corridor’s “Sexist Gatekeeping” in Guardian Op-Ed
For the previous week, Courtney Love has been essential of the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame, posting on Twitter and Instagram in regards to the disparity between female and male inductees. She’s now capped it off with an op-ed for The Guardian, asking, “Why are ladies so marginalised by the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame?”
Within the article, Love notes that the overwhelming majority of musicians within the Rock Corridor are males, and likewise bemoans the absence of feminine music icons—specifically, Massive Mama Thornton, Chaka Khan, and Kate Bush—from the establishment. “The Rock Corridor’s canon-making doesn’t simply reek of sexist gatekeeping, but in addition purposeful ignorance and hostility,” she writes.
In keeping with Love, the shortage of gender variety may be attributed, partially, to the individuals who choose the Rock & Roll Corridor of Famers. “Of the 31 individuals on the nominating board, simply 9 are ladies,” she argues. “In keeping with the music historian Evelyn McDonnell, the Rock Corridor voters, amongst them musicians and trade elites, are 90% male.”
Love additionally means that the Rock Corridor doesn’t induct a proportionate quantity of Black musicians. “It doesn’t look good for Black artists, both—the Beastie Boys had been inducted in 2012 forward of a lot of the Black hip-hop artists they discovered to rhyme from,” she writes. “A Tribe Known as Quest, eligible since 2010 and whose music cast a brand new frontier for hip-hop, had been nominated final 12 months and once more this 12 months, a roll of the cube towards the white rockers they’re compelled to compete with on the ballots.”
Love closes her essay: “If the Rock Corridor will not be keen to take a look at the methods it’s replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face within the music trade, if it can’t correctly honour what visionary ladies artists have created, innovated, revolutionised and contributed to common music—properly, then let it go to hell in a purse.”
Artists grow to be eligible for the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame 25 years after releasing their first business recording. Love’s band, Gap, has been eligible since 2015, however has not been nominated. Love’s late husband Kurt Cobain’s band, Nirvana, was inducted in its first 12 months of eligibility, becoming a member of the Rock Corridor as a part of the category of 2014. Love attended the ceremony with Cobain’s bandmates, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.
Nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame this 12 months embody: A Tribe Known as Quest, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Kate Bush, Missy Elliott, Rage Towards the Machine, Sheryl Crow, and the White Stripes.
Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame for remark.