Each February, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announces roughly a dozen nominees for its yearly induction ceremony. The voting process allows fans to vote — once per day on their website — along with approximately 1,200 industry professionals. Each year, the inductees are announced in April, and a televised induction ceremony is held in the fall.
The nominees have become more scattered with each passing year. Rock purists may decry this as the descent of the institution into a de facto “Pop Music Hall of Fame,” but this evolution is not inherently a bad thing. The most valid criticism of the Hall is its tendency to snub some of the most influential bands of the past half-century in favor of more innocuous acts. One act that has yet to receive a nomination, despite fundamentally creating the indie-rock blueprint, is The Smiths. However, another Manchester group stands above all others as the Hall’s most glaring snub: Joy Division/New Order.
The 2026 class of nominees marks the third nomination for Joy Division/New Order, and early voting trends suggest it may be their weakest showing yet, currently stalled at second to last in the fan vote. It is puzzling why the group has been subjected to so many nominations that have ultimately gone nowhere. Despite defining two distinct, lasting subgenres of alternative music, their lack of broad American appeal makes nomination a yearly ritual of rejection — one that sees them constantly passed over for less influential acts. In 2026, as this disappointing cycle repeats itself, the Hall shouldn’t bother giving Joy Division/New Order another nomination.
Bands aren’t often referred to with two names separated with a slash mark, but in this case, the distinction is vital. The first iteration of the band, Joy Division, was formed in 1976 on the heels of the U.K. punk movement. Heavily influenced by acts like the Sex Pistols, they retained punk’s angst-ridden ethos but transformed its delivery by trading loud, distorted guitars for slower, atmospheric soundscapes driven by synthesizers and bass. They effectively created a new subgenre: the creatively named “post-punk.”
Joy Division released their seminal debut, Unknown Pleasures, in 1979 — its iconic pulsar cover art has since become one of the most recognizable images in alternative music. The following year, on the eve of their first North American tour, lead singer Ian Curtis took his own life. Their first charting single, “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” was released a month later. It is now often considered their greatest song.
For most bands, the story would have ended there. Instead, the remaining members, joined by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, changed their name to New Order and pivoted to electronic dance music — a genre they would go on to define. Their 1983 masterpiece, “Blue Monday” — a nearly eight-minute fusion of disco, synthpop and emerging electronic dance motifs — remains the best-selling 12-inch single of all time.
While Joy Division/New Order saw commercial success in their home country and have enjoyed sustained cultural relevance, they have never been very popular in America. This transatlantic imbalance is likely the single greatest obstacle to their induction. Kate Bush, another British artist snubbed by the Hall for nearly two decades, faced a similar dynamic of limited American popularity. That is until her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” featured prominently in a certain Netflix show called “Stranger Things.” She was inducted the very next year. If “Stranger Things” had included “Blue Monday” or “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” it is difficult to imagine the 2023 induction class excluding Joy Division/New Order.
The other important consideration is that, in many ways, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees function as a promotional tool for the award ceremony. Inducted artists are expected to perform a selection of their greatest hits at the ceremony. This is impossible for Joy Division and highly unlikely for New Order, whose members haven’t been on speaking terms for over two decades. The Smiths suffer a similar condition, with lead singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr entrenched in a 40-year feud. It’s doubtful the Hall would allocate an induction slot to a band unlikely to appear and perform, regardless of artistic merit.
When the Sex Pistols were inducted in 2006, they sent in a rejection letter calling the Hall of Fame “a piss stain.” While the Hall’s management may have taken that in stride, it doesn’t bode well for them if that event is repeated by other bands utterly disinterested in spectacle.
Joy Division/New Order do not require institutional validation to confirm their impact — their work speaks for itself. Nevertheless, so long as they are aimlessly nominated every year and consistently finish near the bottom in voting, the gesture remains nothing but a performative rebuke. If the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has no intention of inducting Joy Division/New Order, it should stop nominating them altogether.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
