Rock Hall adds broad mix of stars

Foo Fighters, the Go-Go’s, Jay-Z, Carole King, Todd Rundgren and Tina Turner will join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame later this year at its 36th induction ceremony.

The 2021 class — which will be feted in person on Oct. 30 in Cleveland — represents a relatively broad mix of musical styles and traditions. It’s also notably long on women, hardly a given for the Rock Hall, which for years has faced criticism that it overvalues the work of older white men.

Foo Fighters and the Go-Go’s were both voted in as first-time nominees; so was Jay-Z, who will join N.W.A, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. as high-profile rappers in the Rock Hall.

(Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl is already in the hall as a member of Nirvana.)

But where Foo Fighters and Jay-Z both made the cut in their first year of eligibility, which the hall defines as 25 years after the release of an act’s first commercial recording, L.A.’s all-female Go-Go’s waited a decade and a half to be nominated after they became eligible in 2006.

King and Turner are being honoured for their solos careers after previous injunctions as members of duos, Turner with Ike and Tina Turner in 1991 and King with songwriter Gerry Goffin since 1990.