The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2022 class of inductees was announced Wednesday, and this’s year’s group includes legends in soul, hip-hop, country, and rock n’ roll.
Revealed in a Wednesday morning announcement, this year’s class includes Eminem, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, and Carly Simon as first-time nominees and inductees in the performer category. Inductees in other categories include Judas Priest and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, for the musical excellence award; Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Cotten, for the early influence award; and music execs Allen Grubman, Jimmy Iovine, and Sylvia Robinson, who will receive the Ahmet Ertegun award, which is given to non-performing industry professionals.
“This diverse group of inductees each had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture and helped change the course of rock & roll,” said John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in a statement. “Their music moved generations and influenced so many artists that followed.”
To be considered, an artist’s earliest recording must have been released at least twenty-five years before the year of the nominations (which should make any millennial feel their age considering that Eminem is being inducted). The Hall is not genre-specific, despite its name — information that Parton didn’t realize when she had announced in March that she would bow out of the nomination process to make room for other rock artists. She later shared in an interview with NPR Morning Edition that she would accept the award.
“It was always my belief that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was for the people in rock music, and I have found out lately that it's not necessarily that,” she said. “... I just felt like I would be taking away from someone that maybe deserved it, certainly more than me, because I never considered myself a rock artist. But obviously, there's more to it than that.”
The ceremony is set to be held at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on November 5, airing on HBO and HBO Max.
