Did Judas Priest + Rage Against the Machine Make the 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Fan Ballot?
The Rock Hall Fan Ballot has become a point of interest, though not always a direct indicator of who will eventually have their names called when the official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction choices for the year are revealed. So how did our heavier nominees on the ballot fare? The results are in and while some fan bases will be happy, others may be left a little exasperated at the final tally.
Judas Priest, who have made the final fan ballot in both of their previous nominations, will not have the extra push this year, coming up just shy of the Top 5. The group finished sixth in voting with 365,999 votes of the over 5,428,573 total votes cast in their favor. The band closed the gap a little, but still fell around 27,000 shy of the fifth place vote getter Dolly Parton, who initially declined a Rock Hall nomination, but later said she would "accept gracefully" after understanding a bit more about the nomination process.
As previously stated, Judas Priest missing out of the fan vote does not necessarily spell that they'll be left out again. The band received the fan nod in their two previous tries, but ended up with not enough votes by the overall voting body to gain entry into the Rock Hall. It could just as easily go the other way this time as the "fan ballot" only counts as one of a large pool of votes cast by the Rock Hall voting body.
One other hard rock band of interest, Rage Against the Machine, also came up well shy of the Top 5, grabbing 190,063 of the votes cast. Also of note, New York Dolls had 120,958 and MC5 netted 95,666 in the fan vote, both near the bottom of those eligible for induction this year.
That said, it wasn't all bad news for rock fans. Pat Benatar, one of rock's reigning females of the '80s, finished third in the voting with 631,299 votes cast in her favor. She'll get the extra push from the fan vote and could be in line to hear her name called for induction.
The rest of the fan vote mirrors our own "Does It Rock Your Hall" bracket tournament from earlier this year. In that tournament, we asked our hard rock and metalhead audience which non-traditional rock artists they'd most like to see in. In that tournament, Duran Duran emerged the victor over Eminem.
A similar result played out with Duran Duran securing a whopping 934,800 of the fan vote tally, followed by Eminem with 684,237. The aforementioned Benatar placed third, with Eurythmics fourth at 442,271 and Parton fifth with 393,796. The full results can be seen here. The official Rock Hall induction announcement for the 2022 class is expected to be made later this month.