Cher, Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz among first-time nominees for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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NEW YORK - American singers Cher, Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, late Irish singer Sinead O’Connor and English rock band Oasis are among the first-time nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2024, which were revealed on Feb 10.

Other new names on the hall’s shortlist include Sade, Foreigner, Peter Frampton and Kool & the Gang. Also on the list are Dave Matthews Band, Mary J. Blige, Jane’s Addiction, A Tribe Called Quest and Eric B. & Rakim, each of whom has been nominated at least once before.

English musician Ozzy Osbourne, who is already part of the pantheon as a member of English rock band Black Sabbath, has gotten the nod as a solo artiste for the first time.

“This remarkable list of nominees reflects the diverse artistes and music that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honours and celebrates,” Mr John Sykes, chair of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement.

“Continuing in the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll, these artistes have created their own sounds that have impacted generations and influenced countless others that have followed in their footsteps.”

The 15 cited artistes are the first batch of nominees since the abrupt departure in 2023 of Mr Jann Wenner, the former Rolling Stone editor and a co-founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, who had long held a powerful sway over the awards process.

In September, Mr Wenner was ejected from the hall’s governing board just one day after the publication of an interview in The New York Times in which he justified the subjects for his interview collection “The Masters” – all of them white and male – with comments that were widely condemned as racist and misogynistic.

Female artistes like Joni Mitchell, he said, were not “philosophers of rock”, and black performers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye “just didn’t articulate at that level”.

It is also a little more than a year after Mr Jon Landau, a former Rolling Stone critic who became American rock legend Bruce Springsteen’s producer and manager, stepped down from his longtime perch as chair of the hall’s deliberately secretive nominating committee.

But this year’s selections largely continue a pattern that has been in place at the hall for much of the last decade – a mix of big-tent pop stars, Generation X and classic rock icons, and a smattering of h...

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