From May 2011 to February 2012, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame featured an exhibit called “Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power.” From September 2012 to August 2014, the exhibit traveled around to various museums in the United States. It made its final stop at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. where I was given a private tour of the collection from over 70 different performers, from Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to Chrissie Hynde and Stevie Nicks.
While the exhibit’s artifacts dated back to the 1920s and traveled through to the present day, my tour guide made sure to point out that one “unusual” woman from the 1980s was partially responsible for the exhibit’s existence. On a visit to the Rock Hall, Cyndi Lauper took a tour of the museum, and she noticed that something was missing. “She very simply said, ‘Where the women at?!,” said my tour guide, and that was the impetus for that exhibit.
Frankly, the same question can be posed about the Rock Hall inductees in general.
Rock Hall’s new chairman John Sykes has made a point in a number of interviews to point out how the Rock Hall needs to evolve. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sykes said, “…it’s time to take the Hall to 2.0. That means a more diverse board, that means more women, people of color, people who reflect the kind of music that’s now being inducted. We have to look and feel like the artists that come into our Hall. That’s just the natural transition.”
With the 2021 Rock Hall nominees set to be announced tomorrow (February 10), there will certainly be a lot of scrutiny regarding how many women are included among the nominees. Here’s hoping some of the ten women artists in the gallery below will be included. They all more than deserve it, and there are plenty of others that still do.
