This year’s nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame range such Grammy mainstays as Mary J. Blige and Mariah Carey – who have tallied more than 70 nominations between them – to Eric B. & Rakim, who have never even been nominated.
The Rock Hall nominees were announced on Feb. 10. This year’s inductees will be announced in late April, with the ceremony set for this fall.
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Blige has received more nominations (37) and more awards (nine) than any of this year’s other Rock Hall contenders. Impressively, she has won in four different genres – R&B, gospel, pop and rap.
Carey may not exactly feel like Grammy royalty. At times, she has probably felt more like a Grammy piñata: She has been nominated in Big Four categories (album, record and song of the year plus best new artist) nine times – but has won in one of those marquee categories just once, when she won best new artist in 1991. Still, her five wins and 34 nominations constitute a formidable Grammy track record.
This year’s Rock Hall nominees include another Grammy winner for best new artist – Sade, which won in 1986 after Whitney Houston was ruled ineligible for having had prior releases – as well as two former nominees in that category: Cher (as part of Sonny & Cher, 1966) and Foreigner (1978).
Five of this year’s Rock Hall candidates have been nominated in the most prestigious Grammy category – album of the year. Kool & the Gang won as part of the multi-artist Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (1979), which included their track “Open Sesame.”
Carey has been nominated for that award three times – for Mariah Carey (1991), Daydream (1996) and The Emancipation of Mimi (2006). Peter Frampton, Dave Matthews Band and Blige have each been nominated for it once – for Frampton Comes Alive! (1977), Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King (2010) and Good Morning Gorgeous (Deluxe) (2023), respectively.
Two of this year’s Rock Hall candidates have been nominated for producer of the year, non-classical – Carey (in tandem with Walter Afanasieff, 1992) and Mick Jones of Foreigner (in tandem with Robert John “Mutt” Lange, 1982, and in tandem with Billy Joel, 1991).
Jones was also nominated for song of the year for writing Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985. Several other Rock Hall contenders had additional Grammy nominations on their own. Two won on their own: Matthews won the best male rock vocal performance in 2004 for his solo hit “Gravedigger,” while Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest won best dance recording in 2006 as the featured artist on The Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize.”
Carey and Sade have each won Grammys in both pop and R&B, a tribute to their versatility.
Carey and Lenny Kravitz were 2024 Recording Academy Global Impact Award honorees. The awards were held on Feb. 1 at the third annual Recording Academy Honors presented by the Black Music Collective at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. (This year’s third recipient of that award, Jay-Z, managed to get his award on the Grammy telecast.)
The 2024 inductees will be decided by a voting body of 1,000+ “artists, historians and members of the music industry,” according to a press statement. This year’s induction ceremony returns to Cleveland, home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame headquarters, this fall. For the second year in a row, the induction ceremony will stream live on Disney+. It will air on ABC at a later date, and will be available on Hulu the following day.
Here are this year’s Rock Hall candidates, ranked by how well they have fared at the Grammys over the years.
Grammy Royalty
Mary J. Blige
Nominations: 37; Wins: 9
Big Four nominations: 4
Mariah Carey
Nominations: 34; Wins: 5
Big Four nominations: 9
Ozzy Osbourne
Nominations: 12; Wins: 5
Big Four nominations: 0
Lenny Kravitz
Nominations: 9; Wins: 4
Big Four nominations: 0
Sade
Nominations: 9; Wins: 4
Big Four nominations: 1
Other Grammy Winners
Dave Matthews Band
Nominations: 11; Wins: 1
Big Four nominations: 1
Sinead O’Connor
Nominations: 8; Wins: 1
Big Four nominations: 1
Cher
Nominations: 7; Wins: 1
Big Four nominations: 2
Peter Frampton
Nominations: 5; Wins: 1
Big Four nominations: 1
Kool & the Gang
Nominations: 3; Wins: 1
Big Four nominations: 0
Never Won a Grammy, but Nominated
Jane’s Addiction
5 nominations
Big Four nominations: 0
A Tribe Called Quest
4 nominations
Big Four nominations: 0
Foreigner
3 nominations
Big Four nominations: 1
Oasis
2 nominations
Big Four nominations: 0