Music fans, get ready. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its inductees for 2018: Bon Jovi, the Moody Blues, Dire Straits, the Cars and Nina Simone.
The Cleveland-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is both a music foundation and a museum, also announced it will honor gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe as an early influence on the rock-music genre. Tharpe (1915–1973), who was prominent in the 1930s and ’40s, defied gender stereotypes with her mastery of the electric guitar.
Here’s a look at the museum’s 2018 inductees:
New Jersey’s Bon Jovi, a rock band that emerged in the 1980s, is best known for its radio-friendly sound and its charismatic lead singer, Jon Bon Jovi. The band has sold more than 120 million albums, fueled by hit songs such as “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
The Moody Blues, a British band whose music evolved from rhythm and blues (R&B) to psychedelia to orchestral rock, was formed in the 1960s. Famous for its rich, symphonic sound, the Moody Blues paved the way for progressive rock and spawned the hits “Nights in White Satin,” “Ride My Seesaw” and “(I’m Just a Singer in) A Rock and Roll Band.”
England’s Dire Straits, led by singer/guitarist Mark Knopfler, dominated the airwaves in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a lean, guitar-driven style and a ringing rhythm section. “Sultans of Swing,” “Expresso Love” and “Money for Nothing” are among the band’s signature hits.
New wavers the Cars, from Boston, rose to prominence in the late 1970s by mixing punk minimalism with power pop. The band crafted the iconic hits “Good Times Roll,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “Just What I Needed” and “Let’s Go” before breaking up in 1988.
Singer and civil-rights activist Nina Simone (1933–2003) drew upon a broad range of musical styles, including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel and pop. Her impassioned vocals on the protest song “Backlash Blues” and the torch songs “I Put a Spell on You” and “Feeling Good” made them entirely her own.
Since its inception in 1983, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation has archived the history of the best-known and most influential artists, producers and other notable figures who shaped rock and roll. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s museum, which opened in 1995, houses memorabilia from all of its inductees.
The museum also traces rock and roll’s birth as an American genre of popular music in the early to mid-1950s, with roots in African-American music styles such as R&B, jump blues, gospel, jazz and boogie woogie, along with country music. The museum teaches about rock’s beginnings through the work of seminal musicians like Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2018 induction ceremony will be held on April 14 in Cleveland.
