Every year, when the inductees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame are announced, we scratch our heads, thinking, ‘What?! They weren’t in already?’
For the first time, Cher, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Mary J. Blige, Ozzy Osbourne, and Dave Matthews Band.
Others who were nominated this year but not selected for induction include Mariah Carey, Eric B. & Rakim, Jane’s Addiction, Lenny Kravitz, Oasis, Sinéad O’Connor, and Sade.
Alexis Korner, John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton earned the Musical Influence Award, while the late Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick and Norman Whitfield will get the Musical Excellence Award. Trail-blazing music executive Suzanne de Passe won the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
To be eligible for the Hall of Fame, ‘an individual artist or band must have released its first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination’.