The final three 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees come in the Musical Excellence category, which is reserved for lesser-known talents who have little chance of making it in via a ballot. These entrants are inducted into the Hall by a special committee.
This year’s Musical Excellence additions are Carol Kaye, Nicky Hopkins, and Thom Bell. And if those names are new to you, that’s why they made it in this way.
Warren Zevon is the final 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee who made it in via the traditional balloting process (more on the rest tomorrow).
Zevon is best known (to me, anyway) as the writer/performer of the excellent ‘Werewolves of London.’ It’s hard for me to hear this song without picturing Tom Cruise peacocking around a pool table in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.
The White Stripes might be responsible for the best-known song to never reach the Billboard Top 40. ‘Seven Nation Army,’ released in 2003, peaked at #76 and yet it’s instantly recognizable to anybody who’s been in a sports arena or political rally. Its opening riff is one of the most famous ever recorded.
‘Seven Nation Army’ alone should probably earn The White Stripes admission into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but they do have a strong overall case. So much so that they made it in not in their first year of eligibility — 2023 — but just two years later.
The grunge era that started in the mid 1980s and peaked in the early 1990s was epitomized by four Seattle bands: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. Nirvana and Pearl Jam are first ballot Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, inducted in 2014 and 2017, respectively. Alice in Chains has been eligible since 2016 but has yet to be nominated.
Soundgarden, eligible since 2012, was nominated three times before making it into the Rock Hall last year.
The next inductee from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2025 has been eligible for a little over a decade and made it in on its first nomination. The rap trio Salt-N-Pepa is the latest in a growing contingent of hip-hop artists in the Hall.
Made up of Salt (Cheryl James), Pepa (Sandra Denton), and DJ Spinderella (Deidra Roper), Salt-N-Pepa was a pioneer for women rap artists. It was the first female rap group to have a Gold and Platinum album and the first to win a Grammy, and for awhile held the record for top-selling album by a woman or women in rap.
Meet Me In Montauk 