Snubbed!: Five great artists who never won a Grammy Award

JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS

You could make the case that Joan Jett, whether on her own, as a member of the seminal girl group The Runaways, or with her usual band, The Blackhearts, is the most important female performer in the history of rock & roll.

She has the resume – five Top Twenty singles, including one that went all the way to the top, and three Top Twenty albums. Beyond that, her influence on multiple generations of punk rockers – especially, but not limited to – female punk rockers, is immense. Jett has been a fairy godmother in black leather to too many artists to count.

She only managed a single nomination during her career – Rock Performance by a Duo or Group in 1989 for “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” The Blackhearts lost to U2’s “Desire”  that year. Good tune – no argument. But for the record, U2 has won 22 Grammys (and 46 nominations.) I would suggest the gap between Bono and Joan is not as vast as those figures would suggest.

“I Love Rock & Roll” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016, a year after the Blackhearts were enshrined in the Rock & Roll HOF.