Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Peter Frampton and Mary J. Blige are part of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2024, along with Dave Matthews Band, Kool & the Gang, Foreigner and A Tribe Called Quest, the hall announced on Sunday.
The latest crop of stars will officially join the pantheon in a ceremony on Oct. 19 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, where the hall’s affiliated museum is also located.
The 39th annual group of inductees matches the hall’s genre and demographic spread of recent years, with a pop diva (Cher), a metal idol (Osbourne), a top funk band of 1970s and ’80s vintage (Kool & the Gang), a couple of ’90s hip-hop and R&B heroes (Blige, Tribe) and rock mainstays from the boomer (Frampton, Foreigner) and Gen X (Matthews) eras.
Of those artists, four were elevated to the hall on their first nomination: Cher, Foreigner, Frampton and Kool & the Gang. Osbourne was nominated for the first time as a solo act, though he had joined the hall as part of Black Sabbath in 2006. The Rock Hall has come under increasing pressure in recent years to diversify its ranks with more women and artists of color, and has made progress in that regard, though some critics say it is not enough.
“Rock ’n’ roll is an ever-evolving amalgam of sounds that impacts culture and moves generations,” John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. “This diverse group of inductees each broke down musical barriers and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.”
Seven acts that were nominated in February did not make the cut: Mariah Carey, Jane’s Addiction, Oasis, Sade, Eric B. & Rakim, Lenny Kravitz and, perhaps most surprisingly, Sinead O’Connor, whose death last year, at age 56, elicited a global outpouring of grief and a reconsideration of her place in rock history.
The hall will also honor the blues musicians Alexis Korner, John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton with the musical influence award, while Jimmy Buffett, Dionne Warwick, the MC5 and the Motown producer and songwriter Norman Whitfield will receive an honor for musical excellence. Suzanne de Passe, a film and television producer who was a longtime executive at Motown, will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award for non-performers.
Artists become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first recording. The nominations are voted on by more than 1,000 music historians, industry professionals and inducted artists.
This year, close watchers of the Rock Hall’s opaque voting process had anticipated the arrival of at least a couple of this year’s inductees.
One is Frampton, the English-born guitarist and singer-songwriter, who played in the band Humble Pie in the late 1960s and early ’70s and then had a successful solo career, most notably with his monster hit double-LP “Frampton Comes Alive!” (1976). At last year’s ceremony, Sheryl Crow had Frampton join her onstage, a seeming endorsement.
And Cher essentially made her own case when she noted on an episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in December that she has had No. 1 songs — as part of Sonny and Cher, or on her own — in each of the last seven decades but was not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“Wait, are you serious?” Clarkson said.
“I wouldn’t be in it now if they gave me a million dollars,” Cher answered. “I’m never going to change my mind. They can just go you-know-what themselves.”