One of those acts that excelled at what it did- catchy and cheesy love songs. But, no real shot at consideration for the HOF.

Posted by JR on Friday, 04/26/2013 @ 16:06pm

They deserve to and should be.

Correction on Michelle's comment:They were named THE most successful band fd the '80s by Billboard Magazine.

Posted by Jenny on Sunday, 04/5/2015 @ 17:02pm

May 12,2015 Air Supply will celebrate 40 years of making music. They deserve to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They still tour and sell out venues through out the world. Their music has grown up a bit, still love songs but rock and roll too, songs have modernized. They put on a great show.

Posted by Sue on Friday, 05/1/2015 @ 18:31pm

After 40 years of touring and releasing albums, after tying the Beatles for successive top 5 singles, after selling millions and millions of albums, after continuing to perform for 5 decades, these guys are not in? Give your head a shake RRHOF!

Posted by Lorraine on Monday, 11/16/2015 @ 02:08am

I think this is the only artist page where I've seen the most women comment. Maybe its just me (?). Anyway, as much as I'd love to see their legacy get plenty of respect and some sort of, well, induction, I'd say their best chances of getting them in is if the hall had a soft-rock division. They may be touring and all, but none of that matters to the RRHOF nominating committee. One of my guilty pleasure songs is 'Lost in Love'.

Posted by Jason Voigt on Monday, 11/16/2015 @ 02:27am

My first cassette tape purchases over 35 years ago were "Lost In Love" by Air Supply and "The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack To Xanadu" by E.L.O. and various artists.

That being said, Air Supply's induction is probably quite a few years away. Neither The Carpenters, Bread, nor America have been inducted yet, nor has Seals And Crofts, Carly Simon, Player, England Dan and John Ford Coley, Dan Hill, Dan Fogelberg, etc. Soft rock may actually be the genre treated the worst by the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

Posted by Enigmaticus on Monday, 11/16/2015 @ 04:03am

Enigmaticus,

Although I agree that most of the people you listed are soft rock, (I consider Carly Simon and the Carpenters more pop than rock) I have to disagree about Dan Fogelberg who I consider a fusion artist. Listen to his music and you can hear elements in it in addition to rock or pop. According to Wiki, he was influenced by elements of folk, pop, rock, classical, jazz and bluegrass. He is from Peoria which is not that far from Chicago. He is definitely influenced by the Chicago fusion style.

Posted by Zuzu on Monday, 11/16/2015 @ 08:02am

Zuzu,

The lines between what is considered "soft rock" and some other style are constantly blurred. For example, many of Rush's songs are not hard at all. However, musicologists have difficulty defining Rush's music as anything other than prog, or hard rock. Some idiots even think that Rush is still heavy metal. A better definition would be "art rock." "Roll The Bones" is definitely not a "hard rock" album, nor is much of "Hold Your Fire," "Presto," or "Snakes & Arrows." So why do I mention Rush on an Air Supply page? Because if I had never developed a taste for softer rock, I probably wouldn't have become an aficionado of "progressive rock."

Posted by Enigmaaticus on Monday, 11/16/2015 @ 09:39am

Enigmaticus,

I see a lot less of blurred lines and a lot more of younger generations trying to redefine a music style that they are not familiar with.

You bring up Rush and personally I suspect that how they are defined is due to confusion with Mahogany Rush and M & R Rush which were defined as hard rock and metal respectively. I'm familiar slightly with Rush's 70s songs and not their 80s work. In the the 70s we just called them rock - plain and simple. Their style may have changed in the 80s but you would know a lot more about that than I do.

folk is in no way, shape or form pop music. Pop music was more defined as a combination of teeny bopper music and adult contemporary. This probably accounts for its wide popularity.

In the 70s most of the women were defined as pop rather than rock or folk. Exceptions are Melanie, Joan Baez and Judy Collins who would have been considered singer-songwriters or folk.

Garage bands were defined as the North American response to the British Invasion. The term British garage band is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. The Brits did no respond to themselves. Garage bands were not punk bands. Artist that were part of garage bands developed into rock artist. Garage band artist did have some accomplished and studied musicians despite rumors to the contrary such as Marty Grebb who played about 6 or 7 different instruments. Record companies also made sure they learned from established artists in many cases.

Younger generations are also trying to redefine soft rock, hard rock and metal. Metal was considered a rock derivative in the 70s. Some artist were considered crossovers. Hard rock is different from metal. soft rock involves acoustic guitars and pianos. The kids are trying to phase out rock which was in between hard and soft or a combination of both.

Singer-songwriter was a specific type of fusion music and was not used to define somebody that just wrote and performed their own songs. It was part of a triad the fused rock, folk, country and sometimes other genres such as blues. Singer-songwriters were more considered rock and you had folk artist and country artist that were usually referred to as outlaw country. Between these three there may have been some blurring of lines but pop was pop and was not considered as part of these groups.

Posted by Zuzu on Monday, 11/16/2015 @ 10:57am

Zuzu, that's a pretty good write-up. As far as younger generations redefining genres and such, I think part of it has to with the nature of history-chronicling and historians in general. In the 1996 edition of Top Pop Singles, Joel Whitburn referred to the Backstreet Boys as a vocal group, but by the mid-2000's, even he was using the term '"boy band"' to describe them. Reading the liner notes of one of the doo-wop box sets, one learns that "doo-wop" wasn't even coined until the '70s; before then, it was known as "vocal R&B." I suspect the term was coined not just for marketing and "Oldies" and "Dusties" programming, but also to differentiate it between the '50s and '70s vocal R&B that was becoming big from acts like the Spinners, Stylistics, Delfonics, and strangely enough, the Dells who were also a "doo-wop" group back then.

But I do think there is come credence to "blurred lines" arguments, since many artists don't like to be categorized by styles and genres, fearing it will pigeonhole them and inhibit/stunt their ability to grow and expand as musicians. As a result, they tend to be influenced by their contemporaries and up-and-comers, fusing those influential styles with their own. For example, U2 said their Pop album was influenced by artists like the Chemical Brothers, which is a far cry from U2's original punk-rock influences, like the Clash. I think that causes some of the alleged blurring of lines.

And of course, there's always marketing. If you read Charles Crossley's review of this year's nominees, he also states how artists loathe categorization, but for trade publications, radio stations, and even helpful in a word of mouth fashion, to do so. Marketing, in my opinion, has more to do with the blurring of lines and fragmentation and fusions of genres, simply by giving names to them.

Also, genres themselves tend to evolve.

Personally, I've always been a little leery of calling pop a genre, as no one has really ever described it adequately with its structural and rhythmic features that otherwise define genres, and that the name itself is just a shortening of "popular"... hardly a criterion for defining a genre. It is however a very convenient catchall term to otherwise describe the melting pot and dilution of genres. Best as I can describe it, it basically stems from Traditional Americana (a songbook coming largely from Stephen Foster--also some of the roots of early folk and country), Barbershop, and most importantly, ballads. I feel balladry really became the prime ingredient due partially to the huge popularity of crooners like Der Bingle, and also the easy marketability of love ballads, which had as much to do with good singers as it did excellent songwriters.

I say this largely because much of what we call "pop" was essentially a "softer" form of rock'n'roll music, in that the bass and drums were less prominent, and more harmonious and mezzo-piano instrumental backing was preferred instead... that is the traits of ballads. "Dance-pop" is a somewhat "softened" version of more rhythmically driven R&B and electronica. And so forth.

But as you said, even that is partially due to what was then being compared to what is now. Bobby Goldsboro once said in an interview that people are surprised to find he toured with the Stones. He said back then, the Stones were rock and roll, he was rock and roll... parents hated all of them! (Which kind of gives extra credibility to what Weird Al said in "Smells Like Nirvana": "We're so loud and incoherent/Boy this ought to bug your parents! Yeah!")

Some very good thoughts you had, Zuzu. Good read.

Posted by Philip on Tuesday, 11/17/2015 @ 00:54am

On Air Supply: They have a case for the RRHOF. AS was one of the first and best Prog Adjacent Australian Soft Rock Bands. They continue to tour 40 years later and Russell is hands down one of the greatest singers. Graham the left handed guitarist crafts some beautiful guitar work. Lost In Love is a Classic where Graham initiates singing and Russell continues later and ends in soaring tenor. Even The Nights Are Better is a solid song as well. Very upbeat. Air Supply has been commercially successful and have many of their songs covered by important artists. When many of rock group have been placed on the scrap heap of history, Air Supply is still around. RRHOF has inducted a wide swath of music groups from James Taylor to The Clash to Darlene Love to NWA. There should be room for Air Supply, America, David Gates & Bread, Pablo Cruise, and groups of this genre. KING

Posted by KING on Sunday, 04/23/2017 @ 14:40pm

Uh, no...👎

Posted by Deth to all puss music on Sunday, 04/23/2017 @ 19:23pm

For all you nay-sayer take another good look at Air Supply! Their music has evolved over the years!
Also to the induction committee members take a look at the achemens that Air Supply has aquired over the past 10 years! One of the Best is their induction to the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame!
Please give Air Supply their dues! Put them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Posted by Susan Lucente on Sunday, 05/6/2018 @ 08:02am

Air Supply will never be inducted into the HOF

Posted by Mark on Sunday, 05/6/2018 @ 09:06am

YES!!!! The totally deserve to be in the hall. That have numerous hits songs. Have longevity that most bands only wish they had. THey even have their own genre of music that they are well known for. I rather see Air Supply in concert over the majority of the acts already in the Hall of fame

Posted by Mike Caldwell on Tuesday, 03/3/2020 @ 00:25am

Very unlikely. There aren't any/many advocates for easy-listening music in the Nom Com and voting body. They're just soft, lame and boring enough not to get inducted, which is why Air Supply is on my "Sinister Six" list.

Posted by The Dude on Tuesday, 03/3/2020 @ 12:05pm

RIP Jim Steinman

Posted by Roy on Sunday, 04/25/2021 @ 12:21pm

They absolutely deserve to be inducted. They've been making new music and touring nonstop since 1975. Whether you consider them to be soft rock, yacht rock or whatever, it's still rock and roll., and they have stood the test of time.

Furthermore, Graham Russell deserves to be inducted as a songwriter. He has has written some of the most incredible songs ever recorded.

Posted by Karen Watson on Friday, 10/1/2021 @ 09:27am