The 2025 Country Music Hall of Fame Inductees

The Country Music Hall of Fame announcement used to be exciting. While I often felt another artist was more deserving, I was still happy to see some legendary artists finally get their due. Now the induction has devolved into, well, a joke for which nobody understands the punchline.

If you're a country music fan and you don't know by now that the Hall of Fame selections are political, where've you been? There have definitely been some head scratchers over the years, but fans have granted the super secret committee a measure of grace, because very few of the artists chosen were truly terrible.   

This year, however, was like your birthday party you were really looking forward to, only to cut into the cake and discover that it's made of cow dung.

To recap the categories:

Modern Era ~ artists are eligible 20 years after they first achieve national prominence.

Veterans Era ~ eligibility arrives 45 years after an artist first achieves national prominence.

Rotating Category ~ the non-performing award, which rotates between songwriter, recording and/or touring musician, and "misc" (actually, generally an exec or sometimes a disc jockey or record producer).

The modern era had a feast of riches from which to choose: Dwight Yoakam, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Steve Wariner, Lorrie Morgan, Trisha Yearwood, even Shania Twain and Tim McGraw. Who did the committee go with? Kenny Chesney.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this. Chesney is one of those artists who was "just there". Not a gifted singer; his singles were unmemorable. In fact, I scrolled through the list of singles he's released since his debut in 1993, and I sort of remember nine (out of 72). Not that I even like all nine. Compare that to Dwight Yoakam ~ well, you can't. I can't even think of a Yoakam single I don't like. And it's not as if the modern era class is weak. Objectively, of the names mentioned above, Chesney's should be dead last.

Because I always include music videos of the inductees, I've picked through the nine singles of Chesney's I (vaguely) remember and included three. This is by no means an endorsement of any of them. One standout fact regarding Kenny's career is that he had no blockbuster single, one he'll always be remembered for. As I stated earlier, he was just kind of "there". 

The main reason I remember this one from 1998 is that I heard it every single freakin' morning as I got ready for work. I can still set the scene ~ standing in front of the bathroom mirror applying my makeup and, oh listen! Here it is again!

A year before that, Chesney released one that is memorable in its annoyance factor:

To prove that I'm not simply a sore loser, I kind of like this one from 2003. In fact, I bought the album (but I used to buy lots of albums). I think I listened to it once all the way through. Still like this one, though:

But if you think the inductions couldn't get any worse, wait. We've yet to get to the coup de grace. The biggest backlog, by far, of deserving artists resides within the veterans class. I've come to realize that the majority of these artists will never be in the hall of fame. It's a travesty. But like with many of life's disappointments, country fans have to find a way to acceptance. It's impossible to list them all, but here are some who are fatally overdue: Lynn Anderson, Eddie Rabbitt, Gene Watson, Johnny Rodriguez, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Johnny Paycheck; and there are a bunch of others.

Who got the nod, you ask? Why, June Carter, due to her singular achievement of marrying Johnny Cash. Look, I don't pretend to understand the music industry's fixation with Cash. I get that he had a "persona", if that's the criteria we're using, but if one takes a look at his discography, the majority of his music all sounds the same, with the same chunka-chunka rhythm, the same two or three chords, and the lyrics are nothing to write home about. Yet, it seems that anyone who ever had a passing acquaintance with him is or will one day be inducted into the hall of fame.

Carter herself admitted that of the three Carter sisters, she was the one who was born without a singing voice. (Anita, on the other hand, possessed a beautiful voice.) It's not just that she didn't have a good voice, she had a bad voice; I mean, really bad. She went into (intentional) comedy because she couldn't sing, and she knew it. She sang like she'd swallowed a lit cigar. 

I would include one of her solo performances, but I don't think she had any. I will say, though, that she did co-write Ring of Fire, so there's that. Sentimentality, and probably fondness, account for something, but they shouldn't be a free pass into what is already a severely restrictive hall of fame.

The shark picture above? Yea, the Hall of Fame has jumped it.

I have no quarrel with the induction of Tony Brown in the non-performing category. I primarily think of Brown as George Strait's producer. In fact, he produced my two favorite Strait albums, Easy Come, Easy Go and Pure Country. And, man, he produced a lot of seminal country albums. He was also a member of gospel singing groups and a backup musician for both Elvis and Emmylou Harris. He also became a Nashville session player.

I'm only going to include a couple of the singles Brown produced, or else I'd be here all day. But below are some choice nuggets. I won't claim that the songs themselves aren't damn good (especially Guitar Town, with some of the most enviable lyrics another songwriter could covet), but there's more to making a fine record than just having a good song. That's what Brown has. Notice what surrounds the singers' voices on these tracks, and try to imagine them without those surroundings. Wondering what a producer does? Well, here you go.

 

One out of three? No, this is supposed to be about excellence, dammit! The Hall of Fame demands three out of three!

Like a lot of things, I'm going to ignore the future inductees. When it's a rigged game, playing is no fun. 

Wake me up when Dwight gets in.