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The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame have announced the names of the nominees for 2022. Following the autumn ceremony in 2021 that went ahead as a hugely successful and flamboyant in-person event, hopes are high for the 2022 awards.
The first round of 17 nominees for the 2022 induction have been announced, with the artists to be shortlisted in the coming months. The musicians for consideration have been named as…
Beck has created some of the most innovative and ambitious music of the past three decades. His category-defying catalog has encompassed a kaleidoscopic array of styles and genres – from folk, soul, funk, hip-hop, electronic, country, and Latin music to virtually every kind of rock – all brought together by clever songcraft, a mix of irony and showmanship, and an absurdist sense of humor. Across a dozen-plus albums, Beck’s music has continually shifted in style and mood, often synthesizing disparate musical elements into pop collages and divinely layered soundscapes.
Endlessly creative and prolific, Beck continually blurs lines between past and present, traditional and modern, and sincerity and satire. Beck is a mainstay in rock – a neo-folk-hop troubadour, a postmodern soul prankster, an artist of the highest caliber who has proven his talents, ingenuity, and longevity time and time again.
Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo are among the most formidable power couples in rock history. Together, they created a sound that deeply impacted the sonic landscape of the 1980s.
Benatar, a classically-trained mezzo-soprano, quit her job in 1971 to pursue a singing career. She started out performing in lounges and nightclubs, using open mic and amateur nights to develop her persona and style. In 1979, she was introduced to Neil Giraldo, whose distinctive, distorted guitar playing complemented the clarity and strength of Benatar’s voice; the duo’s fire-power packed a punch that energized tracks like “Heartbreaker” and “Treat Me Right.” This hard-driving signature sound drove them to the top of the charts with hits like “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “We Belong,” and “Invincible.” Their achievements include two certified multi-platinum studio albums and ten gold and platinum releases. Benatar also dominated the Grammys in the 1980s, winning four consecutive awards beginning in 1980 and garnering a total of nine nominations.
Benatar and Giraldo’s partnership is one of rock’s most long-lasting. They founded their own entertainment company, Bel Chiasso, and are still performing and creating to this day, highlighting that they truly are unstoppable.
Kate Bush creates music that is at once spellbinding, ambitious, complex, and lush. A visionary, Bush steered the course of her career from its infancy, fighting her record label for her debut single in 1978 and maintaining control of her eclectic musical aesthetic by establishing a home recording studio and her own publishing and management companies. Bush burst open doors for women artists to experiment more radically with their music, image, and theatricality, inspiring Björk, Tori Amos, Solange, St. Vincent, and countless others.
DEVO = De-EVOlution. Are we regressing as a culture instead of moving forward? In 1970, the students who would go on to form Devo asked themselves this very question when they witnessed the infamous May 4th Kent State shootings. At that moment Devo were born as equal parts art project, performance art, rock & roll satire, and punk band. They produced a sound that was fresh to the world, a wild amalgam of sharp-edged punk rock guitar angst, Kraftwerk-inspired synthesized modernity, jagged motoric rhythms, and detached spoken word vocalizations. The primary lineup featured two sets of brothers, Bob (guitar) and Gerald (bass) Casale, and Bob (guitar) and Mark (keyboards) Mothersbaugh, along with Alan Myers (drums).
Duran Duran are a band of delicious dichotomies: infectious pop melodies concealing complicated musical arrangements; pioneering synthesizers combined with distorted glam rock guitars. They were new wave outsiders who became music video stars – Tiger Beat fashion pinups who rocked arenas.
With over 100 million records sold and 18 hit singles in the U.S., they continue to innovate their sound, collaborating with new artists including Justin Timberlake, Tove Lo, Ana Matronic, and Janelle Monáe, and working with producers such as Timbaland and Mark Ronson.
Eminem: Unbridled controversy. Unparalleled talent. Unmatched superstardom. As the single best-selling artist of the 2000s, a 15-time Grammy winner, and the first artist to have ten consecutive Number One debut albums on the Billboard 200, Eminem’s accolades speak for themselves. His world-renowned status solidified hip-hop as the most commercially successful music on the planet.
Eminem has become more explicitly political as his career has progressed, delving deeper into his personal struggles and pushing his rap style toward “Rap God” virtuosic perfection. With one hand, he holds up a mirror to American society to expose its darkest corners: domestic violence (“Stan,” “Love the Way You Lie”), white privilege (“White America”), anxieties about homosexuality (Ken Kaniff skits), failed parenthood (“My Mom”), and corrupt politicians (“Mosh”) – no one is left unscathed. With his other hand, he throws up a middle finger. Art that stands the test of time often makes people uncomfortable and questions the status quo, and no one shakes people to their core quite like Eminem.
Much like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the film turns from black-and-white to Technicolor, the opening strains of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” irrevocably changed perceptions of 1980s pop-rock. Employing the mechanistic funk of Krautrock, the grit of gospel, and the strangeness of psychedelia, Eurythmics’ genre- and gender-fluid pop vision was both futuristic and beholden to past eras, while remaining eminently accessible. Eurythmics’ lyrics and imagery presaged the third wave of feminism and a more mainstream deconstruction of sexuality and gender, with their videos and live performances featuring androgynous frontwoman Annie Lennox, at once formidable and alluring. The stories the band told, through song and theatrics, spoke to what it meant to live and love in the late 20th century.
Judas Priest took the molten steel forged by Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and used it to become metal gods, creating the mold for the future of all heavy metal. If you’ve seen Judas Priest live you know the powerful force of their dual guitar attack, driving riffs, soaring operatic vocals – the unapologetic sound of heavy metal played at its absolute best. The roots of the band go back as far as 1969, but it was when vocalist Rob Halford and second lead guitarist Glenn Tipton joined guitarist K. K. Downing and bassist Ian Hill in the 1970s that their unique sound began to take real shape. In 1980, they released the classic British Steel, the album that would propel the band beyond the world of metal and hard rock – starting a run of platinum-selling albums – and onto mainstream radio with “Living After Midnight” and “Breaking the Law.”
Multi-instrumentalist and Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti fused music and politics to become a singular global revolutionary voice. Fela (Olufela Olusegun Oludoton Ransome Kuti) was born in 1938 into a politically active and musical Nigerian family: his father founded the Nigeria Union of Teachers and had a passion for piano, and his mother was known for her anti-colonial, Nigerian home rule movement advocacy.
In 1961, while studying music in London, Fela formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene. He later toured the United States, where he was influenced by soul and funk legends James Brown and Sly Stone. Reflecting the musical and cultural flavors of Africa and Black America’s Civil Rights Movement, Fela fused elements of traditional West African highlife, jazz, and soul music and dubbed this rhythmic hybrid “Afrobeat.”
“Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are gonna be the problem or whether you are gonna be the solution.” For the Motor City 5, there was never any doubt that the band’s unapologetic driving rock anthems would be anything but the solution – the fast-rocking truths, raw and revealing about a culture in turmoil.
Now, over fifty years since the release of the band’s first album, founder Wayne Kramer is back on the road with a super group of musicians playing thought-provoking music during another period of political unrest. The MC50 features members of Faith No More, Fugazi, Soundgarden, and Zen Guerilla, encapsulating the continued broad influence and spirit of the original Motor City 5.
The New York Dolls were punk rock before most music fans had ever even heard of punk, and they inspired virtually every punk band who followed in their wake. Formed in 1971, the Dolls combined the swagger of the Rolling Stones, the raw sounds of the Stooges, the glam of David Bowie and T. Rex, and the pop influence of girl groups into their own brand of take-no-prisoners rock & roll that was unlike anything anyone had seen or heard before.
With her prodigious songwriting talent, vocal and instrumental prowess, charisma, and trademark style, Dolly Parton has achieved immense global success as a musician and blazed a trail for generations of artists to come. In a career spanning six decades, she has recorded more than 50 studio albums and, by her own estimation, written nearly 3,000 songs.
A living legend and a paragon of female empowerment, Parton is beloved not only for her prolific body of work, quintessential style, and philanthropic efforts, but for the humor, wit, and self-deprecating grace that shine through everything she does. Her crossover success broadened the audience for country music and expanded the horizons for countless artists who followed.
Every aspect of Rage Against the Machine throttled the status quo. Formed in 1991, the Los Angeles quartet took aim at oppressive systems of power – cultural, political, economic, and otherwise – and did everything they could to ignite a revolution.
Musically, Rage Against the Machine’s subversion mixed hip-hop, punk, metal, funk, and rock. The band’s self-titled 1992 debut and 1996’s Evil Empire ushered rap-rock into the mainstream and established Rage Against the Machine as a powerful force that harnessed strength from defying sonic boundaries.
Lionel Richie spent a decade as rock & roll’s King Midas – everything he touched turned to gold. With his finger firmly on the pulse of popular music, he crafted enduring love songs and joyous anthems that resonated deeply with listeners. Richie’s effortlessly smooth voice dominated the late 1970s and 1980s, his popularity rivaled only by Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Whitney Houston. His record six Grammy nominations for Song of the Year is an achievement only matched by Paul McCartney.
The influence of Richie’s emotive storytelling can be heard in the music of Babyface, Mariah Carey, Tim McGraw, and the contemporary R&B of Ne-Yo. Recent recognition includes the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center Honors, and the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Richie writes about love the way we want to feel about love, his feel-good music providing a colorful landscape for life’s most significant memories and a soundtrack for celebrations all over the globe.
In the early 1970s, singer-songwriter Carly Simon emerged as a gifted storyteller and lyricist who broke established narratives, writing exquisite songs about modern women’s lives. Her confessional balladry, gorgeous melodies, and catchy choruses made her a captivating voice among a new generation of singer-songwriters.
Simon’s influence on fellow artists is incalculable – among them, Taylor Swift, who invited her onstage in 2013 to perform a duet of “You’re So Vain” and considers Simon one of her “absolute heroes.”
A Tribe Called Quest will always evoke more than just a sound. They shifted the hip-hop landscape forever and expanded the creative possibilities for the genre. Their freedom of expression, ingenuity, and minimalist brilliance continues to inspire generations of hip-hop artists and fans.
One of the most artistic, eclectic, and perceptive rap groups of the 1990s, A Tribe Called Quest nurtured a new alternative hip-hop sub-genre with a caste-free cross-pollination of hip-hop, jazz, and alternative rock. The pioneering group abandoned the aggressive machismo of the era, delving deeply into the jazz-rap revolution.
The group became the nucleus of a New York collective known as the Native Tongues, a musical movement deeply rooted in Afrocentric ideals. They created underground waves that continue to ripple throughout hip-hop, influencing artists from the 1990s to the present. Pharrell Williams has said: “We’re all his sons. Myself, J Dilla, Kanye – we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Tribe albums.”
Dionne Warwick is one of the towering figures of popular music. Raised in a family of gospel singers, she received extensive formal vocal training as a young girl. A trip for her 16th birthday to see Lena Horne perform at the Waldorf Astoria would prove to be a career-defining moment. Reflecting on this experience in 1996, Warwick recalled, “It was probably the greatest influence on me.”
Soon after her debut in 1962, Warwick made an indelible impact by joining forces with iconic songwriting team Burt Bachrach and Hal David. Warwick’s vocal stylings exquisitely complemented the songwriters’ unique and idiosyncratic compositions, her voice as sophisticated as their staccato arrangements and time changes. Her vocal delivery was a defining sound of 1960s cool, with an effortless delivery and soulful tone. Songs like “Walk On By” and “I Say a Little Prayer for You” transported the listener to a different place.
Warwick continues to tour and recently became a Twitter sensation with her playful tweets directed at artists with “the” in their names. Witty exchanges with Chance the Rapper spawned an upcoming collaboration between the two and the Weeknd. Dionne Warwick’s innovation in song interpretation, combined with a seemingly flawless ability to stay relevant, have made her a mainstay in popular music history.
Your vote, your voice. It’s time for you to support your favorite Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2022 Nominees and help them reach the top 5 of the official Fan’s Ballot. You can select up to 5 Nominees daily and submit your vote. Share your ballot, spread the word and rock the vote now until April 29th!
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Michelle is a musician and composer from the UK. She has performed across the UK and Europe and is passionate about arts education and opportunities for women and girls.
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