Nominating Committee member Alan Light joined DJs Nik Carter and Lori Majewski on SiriusXM to announce the 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees last week. Light revealed fascinating information about the discussions in the nominating meeting that led to this year’s ballot. Here are some of the highlights:

• Alan Light personally used his two picks to advocate for Janet Jackson and The Cure, and got both on the ballot.
• Light felt that Janet Jackson deserved one more chance on the ballot this year because of increased exposure as a result of her tour and other awards.
• The Nominating Committee has been rotating through The Cure, The Smiths and Depeche Mode on recent ballots, but Light felt the time was right to give The Cure another chance because of their 40th anniversary shows and other publicity.
• When asked why Judas Priest wasn’t nominated again after doing well in the fan poll last year, Light revealed that they had done “horrendously” in the actual Voting Committee tally, so they decided to shift the focus to Def Leppard.
• Majewski mentioned that the Nominating Committee now has 30 members -- 23 men and seven women (up from six last year). Light said there were 28 people in the room this year (Seymour Stein was calling in from L.A., as revealed on the Who Cares About the Rock Hall? podcast.)
• Light stressed that the Nominating Committee crafts the ballot in a way where they try not to nominate artists who are in a similar lane, so as not to split the vote.
• Alan Light regarding the Stevie Nicks nomination: ”In the Nominating room, Pat Benatar came up, Cyndi Lauper came up, The Go-Go's came up and the Eurythmics were in this conversation, and not that it comes down to this, but the women in the room really did start to coalesce around Stevie and push things that way out of the mix that was there. That was the one that --and it's silly to say that women are one piece of what's here-- when it's women of the 80s, I don't think you put Pat, Cyndi and Stevie on a ballot together in the same way that you don't put The Cure, The Smiths and Depeche on the ballot together. It was actually the women in the committee who sort of led the focus to Stevie out of that list.”
• Alan Light said that Dave Grohl was responsible for getting Devo nominated this year and Paul Shaffer is behind The Zombies appearances on the ballot.
• Light admitted that the Nominating Committee did in fact take the Rock Hall Museum’s Voice Your Choice visitor poll into account when considering the nominees. Stevie Nicks and Def Leppard were the top two leaders all summer and both were nominated. Rock Hall Foundation President Joel Peresman for some reason tried to deny the poll’s influence to the Plain Dealer, "The new in-museum voting system does not factor into the nomination process as the members of the nominating committee aren't made aware of that. And we rely on their independent thinking, which in this case happened to match up.”
• Light mentioned that David Fricke has previously advocated for The Guess Who and that Stevie Van Zandt tries to nominate Procol Harum every year.
• Rock Hall Museum President Greg Harris and Rock Hall VP of Education and Visitor Engagement Jason Hanley both joined the show to discuss the nominees. Each separately mentioned how cool it was that Stevie Nicks would become the first woman to be a multiple inductee.
• Despite having written a book about him, Light didn’t think Jeff Buckley should be inducted into the Rock Hall.