The Rock Hall

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a slide guitar that has been in some rooms)

[Verse 1]
2022, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame puts her on the ballot,
and she takes out a statement and says: respectfully, I must bow out.
I have not earned that right. I do not want votes split on my account.
I am a country artist. Give it to somebody who made a rock record.

[Chorus]
And they inducted her anyway. They just went ahead and did it.
And she said fine — if they are going to put me in there,
then I had better go and make a rock and roll album, hadn't I,
and she was seventy-seven years old, and then she went and made one.

[Verse 2]
Thirty songs. Nine of them hers. Paul McCartney on one. Elton John.
Stevie Nicks, Sting, Debbie Harry, and her goddaughter on another,
and it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200,
which was the first time in her life she had ever done that. At seventy-seven.

[Chorus]
And they inducted her anyway. And the joke of it, the real joke,
is that she treated the honour as an invoice. As something owed and unpaid.
Nobody has ever done that. Nobody in the history of that building
has responded to a lifetime award by going away and earning it retroactively.

[Bridge]
She said her mother told her that if you are given something you did not work for
you should go and work for it afterward, so the ledger comes out right.
And she was a very old woman with a hundred and eleven million records sold
and she still thought the ledger needed to come out right.

[Outro]
(the slide guitar has the last laugh)
She said no.
They did it anyway.
So she went and earned it.