The 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees have officially been announced, and this is a very good year. It’s an unusual class, in that everyone in the performers category is still alive and active. But perhaps more importantly, this is the year that shows us Generation X is finally in charge. Here’s how I know: for one week, in September of 1983, right when those of us in the middle of the generation were around 12 years old and therefore at our most impressionable age, all of these acts were on the Billboard pop singles charts together. (All except for one, but he’s got a good excuse. We’ll get there.)

What it meant to be a rock star, one worth inducting into a Hall of Fame that had only been announced five months before, changed drastically in the ‘80s, maybe even this very week. And as the Boomers give way to Gen X, what we can expect to see in the Hall is bound to evolve. Looks like this is the year where that begins. Let’s meet this year’s class, and the chaotic and culture-shifting pop chart of September 23, 1983 that they all shared.

EURYTHMICS

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#6: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)”
#63: “Love Is A Stranger”

It is half past damn time for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart to get waved in. Their relatively brief time as Eurythmics is reason enough; they jumped genres and bent gender and generally came to exemplify what pop music could be in the ‘80s. Since then, Annie has gone on to an equally legendary solo career, and Dave has produced records for just about everyone on the planet. In September of 1983, the prolific duo was moving down from #1 with their first US single “Sweet Dreams,” moving up with their second, and putting the finishing touches on their next album Touch, which would be released two months later. (That album would contain “Right By Your Side,” the band’s Calypso moment. I’m telling you, Eurythmics could do everything.)

DOLLY PARTON

#17: “Islands In The Stream”

As you know, Dolly was nominated, and then Dolly withdrew, and then the Hall was like: “Oh, it is much too late for that,” and then last week Dolly un-withdrew, and now here she is. There was a bit of whining from the Boomer rock boys about how Dolly isn’t technically rock n' roll, but as a spokesperson for Generation X, let me say, “Shut up, who cares?” Those of us who spent our formative years in this particular cultural moment, when Dolly and Kenny Rogers sat comfortably between The Police and Donna Summer, we know the rules are meant to be broken. Rock n' roll is a spirit, and Dolly has as much of it as, like, Carmine Appice or whoever. As Billy Joel (#1 this week with “Tell Her About It!”) said, “Hot punk, cool funk, even if it’s old junk: it’s still rock n' roll to me.”

LIONEL RICHIE

#43: “All Night Long (All Night)”

One could make the case that Lionel should be inducted with the Commodores, and it is indeed outrageous that they haven’t been in for years, but that’s the way it goes. Lionel’s solo run in the 1980s is legendary, and the way we can tell it’s legendary is that it’s what Bruno Mars has spent the last decade trying to replicate. In September 1983, he was on his way to #1 with the first of five singles from Can’t Slow Down. By the next summer, he’d be at #1 again with “Hello,” a song whose video is peak Friday Night Videos culture.

PAT BENATAR

#78: “Love Is A Battlefield”

Pat’s induction is long-overdue as well, but it makes sense that she should be in this class. Sure, it’s her earlier stuff that’s really groundbreaking. “Heartbreaker” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” are pure attitude, karaoke classics forevermore. “Shadows Of The Night” put a little budget behind its video and made her one of maybe three pre-MTV stars to become MTV stars. Adult contemporary classic “We Belong” was still a year away. But it was “Love Is A Battlefield,” debuting this week, that brought it all together: an angry, defiant song with prominent synths and a video in which she plays a 30-year-old teenage runaway and wins freedom for her fellow dance-hall prisoners through the medium of simple choreography.

CARLY SIMON

#90: “You Know What To Do”

Listen, I just said they were all on the charts in the same week, I didn’t say they were all doing their best work. Carly was untouchable in the 1970s, and her Working Girl renaissance was a few years off, but she did release an album called Hello Big Man in 1983, and it did contain a minor hit that has the Prince-y synths and John Taylor-esque bass the moment demanded. Carly belongs in the Hall of Fame. Other artists on this week’s chart who maybe don’t: Taco, Frank Stallone, Loverboy. Other artists on this week’s chart who definitely do: Huey Lewis and the News, Culture Club, the JoBoxers. (“Just Got Lucky” was the JoBoxers only hit, but it’s that good.)

DURAN DURAN

#97: “Is There Something I Should Know”

The ultimate ‘80s band, on the charts for a very capitalist thing: after the massive US success of Duran Duran’s second album Rio, Capitol re-released their self-titled debut with a new cover and this bonus song tacked onto it, so if you had bought it, you had to buy it all over again, and if you hadn’t, you got to buy what you believed was new. (We now call this process Fame Monstering.) There has been a tiny bit of controversy about Duran Duran even being considered for the Hall of Fame, the argument for the prosecution being “they sound bad.” And sure, Simon had trouble hitting those notes sometimes, and sure, there is no excuse for “The Wild Boys.” But nobody was an ‘80s rock star like Duran Duran were ‘80s rock stars, and that’s what this Hall of Fame is really all about. You want virtuosity? Listen to an Yngvie Malmsteen album on a good pair of headphones and leave me alone.

EMINEM

Okay, Eminem is not on this chart, largely because he was ten years old. But Em has been inducted on his first ballot, which makes sense because he was as huge as a rock n' roll star could be in 2000, a time when we had pretty much stopped arguing about whether hip-hop could be considered rock n' roll. It’s hard to argue with this, though I do wish he’d said “faggot” a few hundred fewer times. I’m also mildly crushed that Kate Bush didn’t make the cut, but I have faith she’ll get there. Judas Priest (on the album charts around this time with Screaming For Vengeance) and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (busy at this moment in history filming Purple Rain as part of The Time) are in on the Musical Excellence Award, which is better than nothing.

I can tell you this: this year’s jam is going to be one for the ages, if only because nobody will need to be a hologram. The induction ceremony will take place in Los Angeles in November. It’ll be a good one. Even without the JoBoxers.