” class=”css-dc6zx6 ey68jwv2″>
Dear Listeners.
This Saturday the latest class of musicians will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Not everyone being honored will appear at the Los Angeles ceremony, though. Carol Kaye, the legendary bassist and session player who will be inducted in the “musical excellence” category, publicly rejected the honor. “First off, I’m not a rocker, I’m a jazz musician,” she told Bob Mehr in a recent Times profile highlighting her extraordinary career. “And I’m not a soloist. I worked in the studio as part of a team.”
Kaye’s quibbles about genre are reminiscent of Dolly Parton’s comments in 2022 that she had not “earned” her Rock Hall nomination because she had never made a rock record. (She reversed course later that year when she was inducted, and released an album called “Rockstar” in 2023.) But in recent years, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has attempted something of a rebrand, trying to refute the assumption that it only pays tribute to old white men with guitars. This year’s inductees include two pathbreaking hip-hop acts (Salt-N-Pepa and Outkast) and one musician known more as a pop star, albeit with a rocker’s voice (Cyndi Lauper). Plenty of more traditional rock outfits made the cut too, like Bad Company, the White Stripes and Soundgarden. You’ll hear them all on today’s playlist.
I’m sympathetic to criticism of the Rock Hall, respectful of anyone’s decision to bow out of the festivities and I find the very phrase “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame” to be something of a humorous oxymoron. But I also love the unexpected, cross-genre-and-generational mash-ups that the ceremony can provide. This year’s list of performers and presenters offers plenty of opportunities for memorable moments. Chappell Roan will induct Lauper, and a truly motley crew of musicians including Nancy Wilson, Brandi Carlile, Taylor Momsen, Mike McCready and Jerry Cantrell will be members of Soundgarden for the night. Curiosity about that performance alone is enough to make me tune in. (The event will stream on Disney+ at 8 p.m. Eastern.)
If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. Joe Cocker: “With a Little Help From My Friends”
Joe Cocker, one of rock’s most distinctive interpreters, made his name by boldly defying one of popular music’s most hallowed rules: Never cover the Beatles. Cocker’s ragged bulldog croak located the soul influence latent in ’60s rock, and later it even brought some welcome grit to the smooth surface of adult contemporary. Though he’s been eligible for the Rock Hall since the ’90s, Cocker was nominated for the first time this year.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Cyndi Lauper: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
Speaking of distinct rock ’n’ roll voices, the consummate New Yorker and pioneering pop-girl weirdo Cyndi Lauper will finally take her rightful place in the Rock Hall this year. (She was nominated once before in 2023, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.) An underrated part of this iconic tune: the bubbly, “Popcorn”-esque synth solo after the first chorus.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Chubby Checker: “The Twist”
Like Carol Kaye, the dance-craze maestro Chubby Checker has a complicated relationship with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Though he has been eligible since the Hall’s inaugural year, he has never been nominated before 2025 — and he wasn’t shy about letting the world know how he felt about that. (“The Twist” itself is in the Hall of Fame, as is the song’s writer and original performer, Hank Ballard.) In 2004, Checker staged a “good-natured” one-man protest outside the induction ceremony, criticizing his snub and what he perceived to be a lack of airplay for “The Twist” on oldies stations. He also suggested that if the Rock Hall wouldn’t induct him, they could at least erect a Chubby Checker statue in the lobby. He’ll finally join this year, but in a twist (sorry), Checker won’t be attending the ceremony. As he explained onstage in July, “We’re not coming. We have a gig.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Salt-N-Pepa: “None of Your Business”
In recent years, the Rock Hall has inducted quite a few hip-hop acts (most recently A Tribe Called Quest, Missy Elliott and Eminem), and this year the influential trio Salt-N-Pepa will join the ranks. Enjoy this unapologetically brash single from the group’s 1993 smash “Very Necessary” — which earned them the first Grammy ever awarded to a female rap group.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. The White Stripes: “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”
The White Stripes’ 2001 breakout “White Blood Cells” opens with this blustery blast of bluesy garage rock, showcasing Jack White’s shambolic energy and the steady pummel of Meg White’s drumming. Though the White Stripes are being honored in their first year of eligibility — first-ballot Hall of Famers, as it were — they’re unlikely to reunite at the ceremony, since the contentedly elusive Meg has long since retired from performing.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Bad Company: “Bad Company”
Though the Bad Company (and former Mott the Hoople) guitarist Mick Ralphs passed away on June 23, he lived long enough to learn that his band was finally set to be inducted into the Rock Hall this fall, after 26 years of eligibility. Ralphs was “elated,” according to the surviving band members, the drummer Simon Kirke and the frontman Paul Rodgers.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Soundgarden: “Outshined”
With Soundgarden’s induction this year, three of the “big four” ’90s grunge bands will be in the Rock Hall. (Nirvana and Pearl Jam are in; maybe next year, Alice in Chains.) Helmed by Chris Cornell, one of rock’s mightiest voices, Soundgarden fused metal influences and undeniable melodicism to create its signature sound. Please enjoy this sludgy single from the band’s 1991 album, “Badmotorfinger,” chosen specifically for this playlist by the biggest Soundgarden fan I know, my dad.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Outkast: “Aquemini”
Boundlessly imaginative, lyrically incisive and stylistically adventurous, Atlanta’s Outkast — the duo of André 3000 and Big Boi — helped take Southern hip-hop global in the mid-1990s and achieved enormous commercial success with the 2003 double album “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.” This title track from their great 1998 album “Aquemini” (that’s “an Aquarius and a Gemini”) is a testament to each rapper’s unique style and to their indissoluble bond: “Until they close the curtain, it’s him and I, Aquemini.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Warren Zevon: “Lawyers, Guns and Money”
Finally, here’s a guy who should have been inducted into the Rock Hall years ago: the droll musical poet Warren Zevon. Zevon’s friends and peers have done plenty lately to bolster his posthumous legacy (he died of mesothelioma in 2003 at 56). In 2023, Billy Joel wrote a letter to the Rock Hall nominating committee urging it to recognize Zevon, and just last month, artists including Jackson Browne and Shooter Jennings performed some of Zevon’s songs live at a star-studded tribute concert. But the strongest argument for Zevon’s induction is the work itself. As my colleague Jon Pareles put it in a great 2003 profile, Zevon had a knack for packing “a screenplay’s worth of incidents into a four-minute song.” This rightly beloved classic from his 1978 album, “Excitable Boy,” is a quintessential example of that approach.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“Meet the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees” track list
Track 1: Joe Cocker, “With a Little Help From My Friends”
Track 2: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
Track 3: Chubby Checker, “The Twist”
Track 4: Salt-N-Pepa, “None of Your Business”
Track 5: The White Stripes, “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”
Track 6: Bad Company, “Bad Company”
Track 7: Soundgarden, “Outshined”
Track 8: Outkast, “Aquemini”
Track 9: Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”
Bonus Tracks
While doing some listening for this playlist, I stumbled on an interesting curio released on the 30th-anniversary edition of Cyndi Lauper’s debut album, “She’s So Unusual.” It’s an early, guitar-driven demo of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” that hews much closer to the sound of the original version, released in 1979 by the Philly rocker Robert Hazard. Lauper’s “Girls” has become so familiar that it’s etched deeply into the grooves of my brain, so it’s wonderfully disorienting to hear this sparse, punky arrangement — even if it doesn’t include that synth solo I love so much.
Lindsay Zoladz is a pop music critic for The Times and writes the subscriber-only music newsletter The Amplifier.
The post Meet the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees appeared first on New York Times.
