Soundgarden, The White Stripes, and Cyndi Lauper headline 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

Like all halls of fame, the inductees include some "technical" names that are less well-known, and Salt-N-Pepa and Warren Zevon got inducted under the "Musical Influence" umbrella, though they are known names. So, all in all, seven names were voted in as full-fledged Rock Hall members: Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Soundgarden and the White Stripes.

You may be surprised that Checker is only now being inducted, given that his seminal hit "The Twist" came out in 1960. In another way, it makes a lot of sense, because Checker is basically "The Twist," and "The Twist" is basically Checker. That was actually a cover song, and then his career became largely about doing variations on "The Twist." Literally, the next year he released the song "Let's Twist Again." There were a lot of variations on that theme, that is to say. On the plus side, Checker is still alive at 83 and hopefully healthy enough to make it to the induction.

All due respect to Cocker and Bad Company, but the headliners here are Lauper, Soundgarden, Outkast, and the White Stripes. In part that's because the latter two duos were still making significant musical contributions into the new millennium. Lauper was one of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s, and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" is arguably the biggest song of any of these artists, though Outkast's "Hey Ya" has a strong argument. Soundgarden is on the proverbial Mount Rushmore of grunge. Sadly, Chris Cornell is not around to be part of their induction.

One of the most-intriguing elements of the Rock Hall induction ceremony is who shows up and who performs. Will Meg White appear, even for the induction speech? Will Jack White bring like six semi-obscure blues musicians with him to play with? Will Outkast show up? Big Boi and Andre 3000 essentially split after 2006's "Idlewild," and while they briefly reunited in 2014, after that they went back on hiatus. It would be awesome to see those two together, and we know Big Boi is down with the Rock Hall. After all, in 2023 he inducted one of his all-time faves, Kate Bush.

Congrats to all the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, including the ones we gave short shrift to.

(h/t Variety)