Cher Says The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Can Go Fuck Itself

NightOwl@lemm.ee to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 273 points –
Cher Says The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Can Go Fuck Itself
stereogum.com
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You know, that interview isn't as bad a proof that he's a douche as people make it out to be.

I'm not saying he isn't douche, he is. I'm just saying that specific interview wasn't damning the way it's been made out to be. What that interview points out and proves is that he's old and arrogant and doesn't bother to think.

It's his actions in the rest of his life that damn him as a douche.

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There's a thing Martin Luther King Jr said, that's partially quotedHere, and I apologize for the source, but I'm a busy bee this morning and that's the first link I could find that covered it.

Anyway, the point being is that this guy personifies exactly what MLK was saying. Outwardly an American liberal (which isn't really the same thing that everyone everywhere uses the word liberal for, hence the specification). On the surface, he's all for the typical ideas of equality and humanity that the word liberal is supposed to cover. But underneath, he convinces himself he's not racist or sexist because he's willing to vote and speak around those ideas.

But, in practice, he's internalized the same patriarchal, bigoted fallacies as many other people do. Mind you, it is difficult to abandon the sense of superiority that thinking you're open minded gives you long enough to actually examine yourself. And it's his arrogance that makes it unlikely he'll ever do the kind of self examination necessary to police himself enough to try and change.

That arrogance was reinforced by the power he held.

I mean, I don't hate the guy. For one, hating some random stranger is a waste of energy. But he isn't unique in his failings. Damn near every human on the planet fails at the kind of self examination necessary to see themselves as flawed. Even the best efforts can fail because it's just so damn hard to look at yourself and divorce that view from your own inner thoughts and motivations. Being objective about the self is hard. Even when someone knows all of that, actually pulling off that objectivity is a long road filled with potholes. I know I sure as fuck fail at it often.

I just wish he be an outlier than a norm.

Being real though, the fact that Rosetta godsblessed Tharpe was not in the very fucking first induction is proof the whole thing is bullshit. Sister Tharpe gave fucking birth to rock n roll. The fucking BEASTIE BOYS were in there before her. I fucking love them, but they aren't rock n roll at all.

You can look at how many foundational rock n roll artists still aren't listed, while non rock acts get in for hype.

It's an empty, bullshit entity created to make money, not give real respect to artists.

Jimi Hendrix was the keystone transformation in rock and paved the pathway to metal, as well as bringing electric guitars into the mainstream and being the first known artist to incorporate distortion into his music as he did. The whammy bar was a novelty before Hendrix. And before he used a whammy bar, he'd produce distortion by holding his guitar specific ways around his speakers to use the feedback purposefully.

I swear Jimi Hendrix must have been a savant..

I agree that the rock n roll hall of fame is a sham organization, but Jimi Hendrix was the greatest influence on rock and I will die on this hill!

Did you reply to the wrong comment? Because I don't get how arguing that one person should be in the hall of fame is an argument either for or against an argument that other foundational people should also have been in the hall of fame from the start.

Jim's great, no argument there, but he's much more a transformational force in a later generation of Rock 'n Roll than anything like a founding father/mother.

I was responding to the "gave birth to rock n roll" part. Maybe I mistook what you meant by that. And fair enough for Hendrix being more a transformational force. I was meaning in the sense of impacting the genre overall, and all the sub-genres he spawned.

But I wasn't arguing that she should not be in the hall of fame/from the start. I didn't say anything like that.

Even if you are not a fan, her legacy and impact is indisputable.

Did you just "you're god damn right" yourself?

I'll never forget her ethereal performance as Bill Murray's alarm clock in Groundhog's Day.

She was robbed at the Oscars that year.

I am indifferent to both Cher and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I’m surprised I even put in the effort to post this comment.

Thank you for your contribution.

Agree. But I dont think she "change the music forever" with Believe, as she claims.

EDIT to add that talk box and vocoder were around in the 70s : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En8uiRa8jPE

Oh she did. Or rather her producers did (although I've read they claim to have used vocoders, not pitch correction, but who knows). Just listen to basically any modern "hip-hop" and you hear that crap.

Or maybe they just listened to the Sesame Street theme song from 1972? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMDCjA9_-tM Cause Vocoder and talk box were around way before Cher and her producers. Believe was just a big hit song, nothing innovative about it, Kraftwerk had been using that king of sound almost 30 years before she did.

I'm fully aware of vocoders and talk boxes, that both work completely differently from pitch correction. The reason why people trace the roots of exaggerated pitch correction to Cher is because her song was the first (popular) one that sounded like exaggerated pitch correction and not like a vocoder or talk box. Most audio engineers I know doubt the claims that they used vocoders, but again who knows.

I would agree that autotune might have kinda change music (although when used in a deliberately exaggerated way it doesn't sound much different from a vocoder), but to me Cher's song is just one of the pop hits that helped popularize the effect. IMO, it's just a very well-produced pop song, which contributed to the rise of a form of vocal processing that's very widespread today, which is already quite a lot. But it's not revolutionary in itself, it's very much in keeping with all the codes of pop music. For the records, I'm actually a teacher in audio engineering at a college and Univ so I've been quite interested in the over-popularity of this type of audio processing in recent decades.

The point is that it was the first pop hit to use it in that way. For what that's worth.

I agree. My point was that it didn't "change music forever" lol.

Exaggerated pitch correction like that sounds very different from a vocoder (at least any vocoder I've ever heard). I'm sure there are ways to get close to that sound using a vocoder and other tools if you really try to replicate it, but there's a reason pretty much everyone thought they used Auto-Tune even though vocoders had been around for a long time and they claimed to have used vocoders. And as it turns out, it was Auto-Tune.

And I'd argue the reason why she thinks she changed music forever (God I hope it's not forever) is because of how widespread that kind of use of exaggerated pitch correction has become. Not that it in itself was a completely new and different thing that was completely unlike anything anyone had ever heard ever and music is now played backwards with no notes.

I read a more recent article where they discussed saying that to keep the production trick a secret. I'll have to find the article.

Edit: not the one I was thinking of but here's an article

That 'pitch machine' would turn out to be Auto-Tune, although Taylor would try and keep this a secret in later interviews, stating that it was a Digitech Talker that he'd used to throw people off the scent!

In 1999, he told Sound on Sound: "I played around with the vocals and realised that the vocoder effect could work. I used a Digitech Talker, a reasonably new piece of kit that looks like an old guitar foot pedal, which I suspect is what it was originally designed for. You plug your mic straight into it, and it gives you a vocoder-like effect, but with clarity; it almost sounds like you've got the original voice coming out the other end."

Taylor eventually revealed the truth about the process to The South Bank Show: "I was kind of playing around with the Auto-Tune, as it's called. With this you can shift the vocal, [and] go to to the nearest note. And then what it does is if you bend a note when you're singing, all this does is it goes along and it doesn't bend a note up until it reaches a certain point and then it just flicks to the nearest note, so you end up with these very 'steppy' sounds. Every note is an exact semitone. There is no sliding and that's where you get this crazy sound."

Would you look at that. Just as we all suspected. I thought they didn't want to say it was Auto-Tune because it was embarrassing.

Didn't it give us the auto-tune effect?

No. It was already widely used, discreetly. She was the first to popularize using it cranked up to 11 as an intentional style choice. It's more apt to say she gave us T-Pain.

And wasn't it the producer who did the cranking uppa? She just gave the thumbs up. She didn't even write a single note on that track.

I'd argue it's exactly that exaggerated sound she's referring to. So by her giving us T-Pain she also gave us everything post T-Pain that also sounds like that.

The idea that random people pick a select few musicians to be inducted is just more artificial scarcity bullshit. It's not a legitimate institution if it can't recognize more people to give a wider breadth of exposure to the legacy of rock n roll. By inducted some, they pretend they have the authority to determine the legacy of rock n roll, but their snubs say more about their deficiencies than about those they snub.

What a weird mix of examples in the summary that doesn’t do justice to her career. Was it written by the hall of fame?

Why does a pop singer care about rock and roll hall of
fame? Do they induct pop singers as well?

I'm not sure if you're being factitious or not but, yes, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducts pop music. In fact, it is, by definition for pop music as it is a record of the music that has influenced our society through popularity. The museum is great, and the idea of a HoF for rockstars is fun, serious and laughable. Cher absolutely belongs in it, but they only allow so many in each year... I do hope she gets in during her lifetime.

Not being facetious. I haven't ever paid attention to the rock and roll Hall of Fame, so I always assumed that it was rock and roll artists who were inducted into it rather than other genres.

That would be a fair assumption, but very incorrect these days.

It's become a joke that they leave out talented rock musicians and induct popular country, pop, and rap artists now.

Pop is a genre, an actual style of music, not simply whatever is popular. Sometimes using a word like 'popular' in a genre name is a bad idea

See also: modern art, and the unwieldy term 'post-modern'.

The Rock Hall is pretty loosey-goosey with its terms. Dolly Parton was inducted last year, which she gracefully ended up accepting only after promising to release a real rock album.

Which she did last month, by the way, and it slaps. Dolly forever.

Yeah all the answers I've seen so far either dismiss this or discuss the word "pop".

"Believe" was pop, and did she particularly do rock a lot? Cause I can't recall. And I'm sure she's awesome, but that still doesn't automatically make her eligible for a rock and roll hall of fame.

So either she did rock (and roll), or the name of this list is basically wrong, or she doesn't belong on there.

And don't get me wrong, if she really doesn't care, good for her. No need to be pissed you don't get a price, ppl will probably recognize your impact even without a price.

I thought that too until someone pointed out they induct country and rap. But really Cher wasn't as important as she thinks she is.

Do they induct pop singers as well?

Yes the Beatles are in.

Whitney Houston was inducted a couple of years ago. You don’t get more pop that than that, she was not rock at all; that year, she beat out Motörhead, Judas Priest, and Todd Rundgren. I don’t see how she influenced rock music, and yet, she even beat out someone who inspired her, and whose music is more closely related to rock than hers was, Chaka Khan.

I’m not saying she wasn’t incredibly talented, just that either she just doesn’t belong in the Rock n Roll HoF, or that the institution itself is a joke that shouldn’t exist.

Anyway, yeah, they induct pop singers.

why should i care if a museum thinks music is good

Because someone's favourite artists isn't in there, even tho they probably don't want to be.

They should put her in the Hall just because of this action. Maybe put a sticker saying "we rocked you". That'd be such a rock-ish thing to do.

Tbf, there aren't a lot of women on that list. I saw Jay Z and no Beyonce? Tina Turner is alongside Ike? Idk, from that list, she probably shouldn't take it personally, they don't seem to dig chicks doing music. https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/a-z

I dunno, I think it's pretty reasonable for "chicks" to take that personally.

Real question, they suck and are obviously sexist, why would any woman want to be part of that crowd? Being recognized as a great by them is like being recognized by nazis. Rock and Roll is based on black blues, he didn't think that black people were thoughtful enough to include in the "masters" list, he actually said that. When someone asked why no POC or women in the masters book, he mentioned that he supposed he could have included a couple of black men or something and named a couple. That list is BS and doesn't matter.

I'm glad Cher is calling it out, because I learned that the hall of fame is a sham and incredibly bad, but I really think she shouldn't take it personal. Honestly, that one should be replaced, someone in the music industry should make a new one that reflects the actual industry.