Why "Weird Al" Yankovic Isn't In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I am not a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voter. I honestly don’t even know what you need to do to become someone with that awesome power. Kill somebody? Pay off the mafia? Give Lou Pearlman a deep tissue massage? But if I were a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voter I would be a single issue, or rather a single-artist voter. 

Obviously I would love it if Phish and Insane Clown Posse were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but that is, alas, never going to happen. Their critical and cultural standing has certainly improved over the past decade or so, and, in an even more refreshing development, ICP’s fans are increasingly recognized as human beings with dignity and souls but the duo’s lingering reputation as the worst act in the world is probably going to keep it from ever getting recognized as one of the greatest artists in history. 

“Weird Al” Yankovic is a different story. He’s one of our most beloved, consistent and enduring entertainers, a legend, national treasure and comic genius who broke out of the novelty music ghetto to have a career for the ages. No one can deny that over the course of his four decades as a recording artist Al has left an indelible and overwhelmingly positive mark on the world of pop music and pop culture. 

Al at least has his FIVE Grammys to console him.

Al has been a hero and a role model to generations of geeks. He’s a figure of unimpeachable integrity whose songs are woven so deeply and inextricably into the fabric of pop culture that it’s damn near impossible to imagine the last half century of pop music without him. 

Al is the most successful person in the world at what he does yet there is a very good chance that Al will never be voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

Because the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when it comes right down to it, is really a Hall of Pretension. It’s a Hall of Self-Seriousness. It’s a bloated testament to how seriously the Rock and Roll Establishment, as epitomized by longtime Rolling Stone honcho Jann Wenner, takes itself. 

The mere existence of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame angrily, haughtily insists that rock and roll music is a matter of profound cultural significance. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame insists that rock isn’t just fun, catchy tunes that help rubes and suckers forget momentarily about their miserable lives but rather ART that must be respected and put behind glass and recognized for posterity in a MUSEUM. 

The music of “Weird Al” Yankovic doesn’t just say otherwise, it SCREAMS otherwise. Al’s entire career is dedicated to the extremely, even excessively true and reasonable proposition that rock and pop are ridiculous and silly and deserved to be mocked and made fun of rather than stuck behind glass like it was the fucking Constitution or Declaration of Independence. 

Take the first polka medley Al ever released, from In 3-D. In it he and his band casually slaughter the kinds of sacred cows the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exists to glorify and sanctify as if they were Saints and not debauched drug addicts who happened to be unusually gifted at bass guitar or singing, combining generation-defining anthems by The Beatles, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Clash, The Rolling Stones and The Who with glorious nonsense by Berlin and Lawrence Welk to illustrate that it’s ultimately all just pop music, and pop music is, at the end of the day, a consumer product created to be consumed, enjoyed and quickly forgotten.

Al’s overall message is not just decidedly different from that of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: they’re pretty much antithetical. 

In that respect Al’s failure to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reflects just how successful he has been at puncturing the pomposity, pretension, posturing and self-seriousness that define the Rock Hall as an institution. 

Al isn’t excluded because he’s not good enough or because he has not given as much to the world of music as, say, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Bon Jovi but rather because his casually irreverent persona and ideology stand in brash, bold defiance of everything it stands for, and that is ultimately a very good thing, for the world and his fans, if not necessarily for the Hall itself, since Al’s existence and exclusion both speak powerfully to its most fatal flaw, an unwillingness to have a sense of humor about itself or acknowledge its own fundamental ridiculousness.

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Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of  THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here