The Hall of Fame Finally Got It Right on Joy Division/New Order

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Up, down, turn around, please don’t let me hit the ground. Today is a celebration moment for fans of Joy Division and New Order, finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, after decades of rejection.

Even if you consider them two separate units, they’re both ridiculously overqualified for the Hall — two of the most innovative and influential bands of the past 50 years. Combined into one for last year’s nomination, on one of the weakest ballots in history, they still got stiffed. It looked like a hopeless case.

So this is a big win for the Hall, which needs Joy Division and New Order far more than these bands need the Hall. For years, they’ve been the Hall’s most scandalous omission. But it’s a hopeful sign that maybe the voters are ready to let go of the institution’s long-running hostility to Eighties and Nineties rock. It would even qualify as a happy occasion, if that didn’t seem sacrilegious for the band that gave us “Disorder,” “Isolation,” “Wilderness,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

Joy Division lasted only a few years, rising out of the late-Seventies punk explosion, with two sublime albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer, as well as a string of singles like “Transmission” and “Atmosphere.” They defined a new style of industrial doom, reflecting the bombed-out urban bleakness of their Northern English home city, Manchester. But tragically, singer Ian Curtis died in May 1980, on the eve of their first U.S. tour. The other three kept playing, simply because they had no idea what else to do, regrouping as New Order but refusing to touch any Joy Division material.

Guitarist Bernard Sumner took over as the new singer, since nobody else wanted the job. “I felt I couldn’t sing and play guitar at the same time,” he wrote in his memoir Chapter and Verse. “Well, actually, I couldn’t sing full stop.” (Barney’s not being modest there.) They recruited Gillian Gilbert, the drummer’s girlfriend, on synthesizer, as they began dabbling in the electronic sounds they’d heard on late nights in sleazy New York clubs. New Order’s breakthrough was the 1982 single “Temptation,” nine minutes of trembly post-punk disco adrenaline, mixing goth gloom and dance-floor rapture. Yet almost by accident, it blew up on actual floors, leading to club classics like “Blue Monday,” “Confusion,” “Bizarre Love Triangle,” and “True Faith,” as well as classic albums like Brotherhood (which turns 40 this fall). The whole history of pop music is encapsulated in this band’s evolution from shy floor-staring twits to beatbox-crazed party people.

Editor’s picks

The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far

The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

As everybody knows, New Order eventually split into two factions of mortal enemies. Sumner, Gilbert, and drummer Stephen Morris have carried on, while bassist Peter Hook quit to start his own ace live band, the Light, playing the exact same catalog on rival tours. Barney and Hooky both wrote excellent memoirs chronicling how much they despise each other, stacking up petty grudges like amps. Imagining these two sharing the same podium? Compared to this crew, the Gallagher brothers are a snugglefest.

But both bands’ influence runs deep all over the music world, crossing all generational and genre lines. Olivia Rodrigo just raved about them on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Music Makes Us podcast with Kathleen Hanna. Asked what she’d been listening to lately, she replied, “I’ve been diving deeper into the Cure’s discography, as well as some of their contemporaries like New Order and Joy Division.” No wonder her upcoming album has the Ian-worthy title You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl In Love, which sounds like a line from “She’s Lost Control.” Will “Drop Dead” be her answer to “Dead Souls”?

In Eighties terms, let’s put it this way: New Order are the first band from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack to make the Hall, which is a massive generational sea change. This can only mean good things for the Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, INXS (nominated this year, but maybe next time), and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, all of whom get my vote.

Related Content

But the Manchester death-disco kings are part of a stellar Hall of Fame class this year. The voters chose impeccably: Wu-Tang Clan, Luther Vandross (both first-time nominees, crazy as it seems), Oasis, Sade, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, and Billy Idol. Everybody I voted for got in — definitely the first time that’s ever happened. But there’s also a noble slate of Early Influences: Celia Cruz, Fela Kuti, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, and Gram Parsons. There are Musical Excellence nods for producers Jimmy Miller (who made the Stones’ best albums), Arif Mardin (who deserves it for Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche ’85), and Rick Rubin (but of course), and Philly soul songwriter Linda Creed (who gave us “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” case closed). Also getting inducted: Ed Sullivan, which is brilliant considering how he showed Elvis from the waist up. It’d be Mr. Sullivan’s worst nightmare to be remembered as a friend to rock & roll, which he reluctantly was.

It feels like a watershed moment for the Hall. It’s reason for hope, after the fiasco of last year. The 2025 ballot was the all-time nadir of the nominating committee, the shoddiest ballot ever, heavy on 1960s/1970s D-list leftovers. (And yet still no Monkees, FFS — time to fix that.) There wasn’t much the voters could do with a menu so lame. This year feels so different, it’s enough to get your hopes up, even when you’re fully aware that the Hall, like love, will tear us apart again.

Keep in mind: The main purpose of the Hall of Fame is to keep us arguing about it. That’s what it’s designed to do — making people mad is a feature of the Hall, not a bug. It began inducting artists in 1986, when there were already hundreds of worthy candidates, but they induct only a handful every year, since the event is a dinner, and so there’s a firm ceiling on how many people you can invite, or dinner would drag on until breakfast. So it’s a guaranteed argument-starter, and always will be — that’s what it’s there for. For all fans, part of why we love pop music is arguing over it, and that’s why so many otherwise sane adults love frothing at the mouth about the Hall.

But for years, the Hall had a bizarre phobia of post-1980 music, unless it was mega-platinum. Rock bands from that era were taboo, and especially the forbidden zone of English new wave. The Cure finally got elected in 2019, soon followed by Depeche Mode and Duran Duran. Even so, the Hall has kept holding out against Eighties/Nineties rock. Case in point: the B-52s have never been nominated, not once. Pardon me for asking, but in what private Idaho are the B-52s not a universally beloved pop phenomenon? For a career with such staying power, impact, innovation, still dancing that mess around after nearly 50 years, it’s a gigantic hole in the Hall’s rusted tin roof. The same goes for the Pixies, one of the most influential bands ever from the American underground, inspiring Nirvana and all that followed. Never nominated. The Replacements? Hüsker Dü? Sonic Youth? Never nominated. The Smiths? Nominated once but ignored ever since. (Which is undeniably how we Smiths fans want it. Call us morbid, call us pale.)

The Nineties were the decade when rock bands were at an all-time peak in terms of popularity, cultural impact, commercial clout, and musical vitality. Yet it’s the decade the Hall has ignored most aggressively. The Smashing Pumpkins, merely the era’s biggest rock band? Never even nominated. Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Hole, the Cranberries, No Doubt, all wildly famous, all eligible for years already, none nominated. Mind you, I’m not even talking about my pet indie faves here. (Do you have any idea how painful it is for an obsessive Pavement freak to find myself sticking up for the Pumpkins? You think it’s easy, but you’re wrong.)

Phish won the fan vote last year — ran away with it, actually. Everybody expected them to be a shoo-in, yet this year they got mysteriously axed from the ballot. With this year’s nominees, the Hall threw a random assortment of 2000s pop figures into the mix — but they can’t keep fast-forwarding over Gen X. Every year, the Hall’s refusal to reckon with the Nineties is like raaaaain on our weddin’ day.

So this year’s Hall roster feels like a real historic turning point. Instead of the usual bottom-feeder Sixties/Seventies also-rans, it’s an entire class full of post-1980 legends. And it’s about time.

Joy Division/New Order are the tip of a very cool iceberg. The Wu-Tang Clan — I’d vote for each of them individually, even though it would take a dozen ballots. Luther Vandross finally breezed in on the first try, a giant of American music, such a legend that Cher accidentally gave him a Grammy this year. Iron Maiden, finally sneaking Eddie past the Hall’s metal block. Oasis, finally making it on the basis of their charming personalities.

I’ve voted for Sade so many times, it’s gratifying to see her finally make it, with her one-of-a-kind career, a New Romantic sensation who started in the post-Bowie London new wave scene, then pulled off the delicate feat of crossing over to American R&B, without changing her sound at all. Billy Idol is an eternal sleaze fave who led the NYC air-quality campaign with the slogan “Billy Never Idles,” inspiring Rolling Stone to call him “the Greta Thunberg of parking violations.”

Trending Stories