The future of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's Singles Category has been suspect since last year's induction ceremony segment announcing the honored songs was cut from HBO's broadcast. To cast further doubt on the viability of the category, the Rock Hall has been slow to display the inducted singles in the Museum and on the website (the songs are now listed on the site with their induction classes). There was also no mention of the category when the inductees were announced last week.

The category's sole champion to date has been Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee member Steven Van Zandt. This week he clarified the flexible criteria for the category in a tweet:

No real rules. Special songs from the soundtrack of our lives. Influential. Or important. Or fun. Mostly by artist that won’t get in but not always. Like a Rock Hall Jukebox. A few of us just pick em.

The Rock Hall describes the category with weightier (but still vague) language:

This category of recognition focuses on the songs which have established a permanence in our history and influenced rock and roll. These songs have had an immense cultural impact and merit a place in history.

So, songs could have "immense cultural impact" or just be "fun." Van Zandt will talk to a couple people and just pick a few songs to carve into history. Whatever. When literally thousands of songs meet the loose definition of the category, it effectively becomes a meaningless award.

Steven Van Zandt was recently interviewed by Brian Ives for Beasley Media to discuss the Rock Hall and his position serving on the Nominating Committee for 18 years:

Ives: You’ve advocated for a lot of legendary acts to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: the Rascals, the Dave Clark Five, Darlene Love, the Hollies. But are you getting turned on to relatively younger bands, as groups like the Cure and Radiohead get inducted?

SVZ: I’m not opposed to checking things out. It’s just mostly they don’t speak to me. I don’t make a value judgment on it. I may not love something but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I got no problem with any of that. They might just not be something that necessarily speaks to me.

Like the bands I am still trying to get people into like Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n Roll Trio and Procol Harum, The J. Geils Band. I’m still trying to get into the basic obvious bands that should be in for historic reasons. The difference is, when it comes to the Radioheads and the Cures, and those kinds of bands, I tend to think more chronologically. It’s not that they shouldn’t be in, but I just think the ones that without whom they wouldn’t exist, we need to get them in first. These are the ones that really created this thing that we are all still making a living from, you know. That includes some doo-wop groups and others that should be in.

Van Zandt echoes some of the same frustrations that fellow NomCom member Seymour Stein did when lamenting that The Clovers, Connie Francis and Ivory Joe Hunter still couldn't get nominated.

Ives then asked Van Zandt about KISS's controversial exclusion:

Ives: I think that Tom Morello turned a lot of people’s heads with his speech at KISS’s induction. It was as passionate as his speeches about worker’s rights. I know a lot of people on the nominating committee had it in for KISS. Did any of that change, in your mind, when he made that speech?

SVZ: I liked them and I had seen them. I had happened to go, Doc [McGhee], the manager, called me to come down and check them out. For some reason, I had never seen them. And I went to a show. I thought this was like maybe 20 years ago. I was quite surprised by how many good songs they had. There was one good song after the other.

Now, a lot of these things have to do with context and perspective. When they came out we were all coming out of the Renaissance period of the ’50s and ’60s. We weren’t going to judge them the same way because that was at the beginning of the early ’70s and the beginning of the fragmentation [of rock and roll], and the beginning and the hybrids and theatricality and the beginning of so many things that were now going to go against tradition. Those of us who were traditionalists were not necessarily ready for it or put it into perspective. But you know 20-30 years later, I look at them compared to even groups of the ’80s and certainly in the ’90s. And you say, you know what, they had a bunch of really good songs. And they are great performers. So no, I had absolutely no problem with KISS going in.

Some people were a little bit upset about it. But you know it’s tough. It’s tough to get in that Hall of Fame. And I get very upset when people don’t show up for it.

Ives: Like Radiohead or the Sex Pistols.

SVZ: Yeah.. I don’t like it. It’s going to be the first line in your epitaph, man. You know what I mean?