OK, you keep bringing up “wake.”
>> I don’t think innovation is that important. <<
What do you interpret “wake” to mean? If Kate copies Janet, and Janet merely copies Wendy, how is Kate in Janet’s wake, and not Wendy’s?
>> I won’t count Madonna as any less rock than the Beatles or Paul Anka. <<
“Pop” is simply whatever is popular. If your definition of Rock includes all of Pop, you basically have no definition of Rock whatsoever. It’s not a genre of music at all. Which is pretty much what you’d have to assert to include both Paul Anka and Madonna.
>> Can you tell the story without Madonna? <<
WHAT story? The story of Rock’n’Roll, the story of popular music in general, or the story of Celebrity Worship by perverts? I can perfectly well tell the story of Rock’n’Roll with no mention of Madonna.
Besides, your premise is invalid: If I want to tell the story of every rock singer, then I suppose I have to mention Madonna. (She certainly AFFECTED Pink.) But by that logic, I also have to enshrine Tipper Gore and Mark David Chapman.
Of course, I’m seeing that this REALLY comes down to the notion that “Take A Bow,” “Music,” “Vogue” and “Ray of Light” are rock music. If so, where IS Paul Anka, anyway? Barbara Streissand? Frank Sinatra? Celine Dion? If mere popularity on the Pop Charts is enough, where are the Monkees? (You wanna talk about a pop cultural wake??? How about pre-fab boy bands?) Where’s Garth Brooks? (There sure as HELL wouldn’t be Taylor Swift with Garth Brooks!) How about Patti Page? Leonard Bernstein? Rogers and Hamerstein?
You brought up wake. I’m acknowledging that it’s important.
One of the things we always have to keep in mind in music, because it is an additive art form, is there’s multiple steps to adding something to the form. Let’s look at tapping, that method of playing the guitar that swept the world when Eddie Van Halen started doing. But Eddie didn’t invent it. Tapping a stringed instrument goes back to Paganini. In a rock and roll context it goes back to Canned Heat. But nobody questions that it was Eddie that turned it into a big freaking deal.
Pop the word comes from popular. But pop the music genre is a subsection of rock and roll. Basically the modern concept of pop started when clean safe white guys started doing clean safe covers (usually uncredited and unpaid for) of “colored music”, aka rock and roll. Pop is what happens when you make rock safe for 14 year old girls. And therefore has to be a part of rock.
Rock and roll, popular music, and celebrity worship are basically all the same story.
Tipper Gore absolutely should be in the HOF. It really should have a subwing for “the enemy”, that would include various record burners and payola guys. But they all changed the face of rock and roll. I want Tipper right next to the Satanic Panic clowns that (accidentally) helped heavy metal get from the underground to dominance in the mid 80s.
Where is Paul Anka? Much as I hate him he had a massive string of hits. The Monkees should absolutely be in, heck they birthed MTV.
I don’t want to tell the story of every rock singer, I want to tell the story of rock and roll. And you cannot tell the story of 1980s rock and roll, how it got reinvented for the video age, the second wave of high production stage shows, and the rise of the pop diva without Madonna.