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One hundred million records sold? Check. Super-successful sold-out tours for decades? Check. Multiple awards? Check. Influence over younger generations? Check — just look at pop superstar Taylor Swift‘s new video. So why the heck isn’t Cher in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?
Her current tour mate, Chic‘s Nile Rodgers, says it’s because the system is flawed.
Rodgers — who’s a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and is also the chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame — has been opening for Cher with Chic most of this year on her current tour, and will resume touring with her in November. He believes Cher has been overlooked because people are too focused on opinions and not cold, hard facts.
“Unfortunately, I think that it’s too many people trying to prove that their teenage years were cooler than the other person’s teenage years,” Nile told reporters at the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala recently. “Because I think that things like Halls of Fame should be based on statistics, and what people have actually accomplished…Not what you think — it’s actually what you do.”
Rodgers then used the example of a baseball player who hits a huge number of home runs. “The announcer says, ‘That person is a future Hall of Famer’…because they’re basing it on statistics,” the Chic frontman pointed out. “They know that you cannot perform at that level and never be in the Hall of Fame. It’s impossible.”
He adds, ruefully, “But in our music business, you can perform at Cher’s level and not get in the Hall of Fame. It doesn’t make any sense!”
Cher can take comfort in knowing that even if she never gets in, she can go back to polishing her Oscar, her Grammy, her Emmy, her Golden Globes and her Kennedy Center Honor.
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