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Trending on Billboard It’s that time of year again, when some of music’s greatest living legends gather together to celebrate one another’s immense impact on culture, with Cyndi Lauper, the White Stripes, Outkast and more getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2025 on Saturday (Nov. 8). As it is […]
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There wouldn’t be a Chappell Roan without Cyndi Lauper, whom the “Good Luck, Babe!” singer helped induct into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Saturday (Nov. 8).
And in a Sunday (Nov. 9) post on Instagram after the event, Roan acknowledged the indelible impact the pop pioneer had on her own career while sharing photos from the red carpet in Los Angeles. “Sooo honored to have played a part in inducting THEE @cyndilauper into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Trending on Billboard Bad Company joined an exclusive club on Saturday (Nov. 8), becoming just the 10th artist whose debut album had topped the Billboard 200 to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The band’s eponymous debut album reached No. 1 in the issue dated Sept. 28, 1974, dethroning Stevie Wonder’s […]
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Salt-N-Pepa‘s Spinderella is now the first female DJ ever inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The historic moment happened Saturday (Nov. 8) during the the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater, where Salt-N-Pepa were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
After a speech from Missy Elliott, the trio performed a medley of their classic hits including 1987’s “Push It” and 1993’s “Whatta Man,” for which they were joined by the song’s original collaborators En Vogue.
The trio then made its own acceptance speeches, with Salt-N-Pepa DJ Spinderella, whose real name is Deidra Muriel Roper, noting that the honor makes her the first female DJ ever inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“When I started, it was a rare thing to see a woman behind turntables,” Spinderella said. “It was literally the boys club, so I had to carve my own lane. I had to show up. It was dedication; it was my craft, and I never missed a beat, in 40 years y’all… I carry every female DJ who ever dared to dream. Every woman who touched a turntable and said, ‘I can do that too.’ This is ours. Respect the DJ.”
DJs already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame include DJ Kool Herc, who was inducted in 2003 and Grandmaster Flash, who was inducted in 2007.
The trio’s Saturday night acceptance speech also saw Salt-N-Pepa’s Cheryl “Salt” James referencing the group’s lawsuit, filed in May, against Universal Music Group to regain control of their masters, alleging that the record company has not honored Salt-N-Pepa’s copyright clawback rights and has punished them by taking their music off streaming.
“We’re in a fight for our masters that rightfully belong to us…,” James said. “After 40 years, our streaming music has been taking down from all streaming platforms because the industry doesn’t want to play fair,” then, amid cheers, added that “Salt-N- Pepa has never been afraid of a fight.”
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Chappell Roan won’t be eligible for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame until 2042 — 25 years after the release of her first commercial recording — but she’ll have a chance to check out the proceedings on Saturday, Nov. 8, when she is a guest at the 2025 Induction Ceremony. The Killers, who become eligible for Rock Hall membership much sooner, in 2028, have also joined the lineup.
The 40th annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony is set for the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Previously announced guests who will take the stage to present, perform and honor this year’s inductees are Beck, Brandi Carlile, David Letterman, Doja Cat, Elton John, Flea, Iggy Pop, J.I.D, Killer Mike, Maxwell, Missy Elliott, Olivia Rodrigo, Questlove, RAYE, Sleepy Brown, Taylor Momsen, Teddy Swims and Twenty One Pilots.
As previously announced, this year’s inductees are Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Soundgarden and The White Stripes, along with Salt-N-Pepa and Warren Zevon for Musical Influence, Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins, and Carol Kaye for Musical Excellence and Lenny Waronker for the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
The induction ceremony will stream live coast-to-coast on Disney+ on Saturday, Nov. 8, at 8 p.m. ET, and will be available to stream following the ceremony. ABC will air a primetime special with performance highlights and standout moments on Thursday, Jan. 1, at 8:00 p.m. ET, available the following day on Hulu.
Fans who wish to attend the ceremony in person can purchase tickets at AXS.com.
The 2025 Inductee Exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland is set to open to the public on Oct 31. It will feature artifacts such as Lauper’s handwritten lyrics to “Time After Time”; the outfits worn by Meg White and Jack White on the cover of The White Stripes’ Icky Thump; a 1979 Gibson Les Paul electric guitar played by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden; and outfits worn by the members of Outkast including the outfit Andre 3000 wore in the “Hey Ya!” music video.
Who qualifies for the Rock Hall? According to their site: “Artists — a group encompassing performers, composers and/or musicians — become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording. Besides demonstrating unquestionable musical excellence and talent, inductees will have had a significant impact on the development, evolution and preservation of rock n’ roll.”
Billboard’s Live Music Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. For tickets and more information, visit the event’s website.
Lenny Waronker says his that receiving the Ahmet Ertegun Award at this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be “very nice” but also acknowledges that “it scares me a bit.”
“What they’re going to be doing certainly will take the pressure off of having to get up and make a speech, ’cause I’m not going to have to make a speech,” the longtime record executive tells Billboard. “There’s going to be a lot of video and things like that. But when you get right down to it, it’s nice. It’s an honor and it’s important and it feels good.”
Two of his five children have followed Waronker into the music business – singer-songwriter Anna Waronker, who founded the rock band that dog, and drummer Joey Waronker, who’s worked with everyone from Beck to R.E.M. and will be on the road playing with Oasis this summer.
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The elder Waronker, 83, is being honored for more than six decades of groundbreaking work, as a producer as well as the former president of Warner Bros. Records and co-founder of DreamWorks Records, playing an instrumental role in the careers of artists such as Randy Newman, James Taylor, Rickie Lee Jones, Maria Muldaur, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Prince, John Fogerty, R.E.M., Rufus Wainwright and Elliott Smith. Since 2010 he’s been back at Warner working as a consultant or, as he puts it, “a senior A&R executive” who’s helped with projects by Jenny Lewis, Gary Clark Jr., Kimbra and more.
Being behind the scenes was part of Waronker’s DNA. Growing up in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades with childhood friend Newman, his father Simon transitioned from playing violin in the 20th Century Fox Orchestra to a contractor, then founded Liberty Records in 1955. “I was exposed to music at a very young age,” says Waronker, who spent summers at Liberty while attending the USC Thornton School of Music. He joined the company full-time after graduating, working for the label’s publishing division, Metric Music, where he produced song demos.
“The door really opened when my father started (Liberty). I grew up watching a record company being built and being part of it. I knew what was going on; when he would sign an act that I was familiar with I’d be excited, and when he lost an act…I got to understand that kind of disappointment.”
Waronker subsequently became one of Warners’ most prolific in-house producers, bringing Newman and Van Dyke Parks to the label and helming albums by Jones, Muldaur, Harpers Bizarre, the Everly Brothers, Ry Cooder, Arlo Guthrie and Gordon Lightfoot. He also worked on specific tracks for Taylor (“Shower the People,” “Mexico,” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)”), Michael McDonald (“I Keep Forgettin’”), Clapton (“Forever Man”) and Stewart (“Broken Arrow”). Mo Ostin — who received the Ertegun Award in 2003 — made Waronker head of A&R in 1970 and company president in 1982.
“I had two careers, in a way,” says Waronker, who brought producers such as Ted Templeman (formerly of Harpers Bizarre), Russ Titelman, Gary Katz, Michael Omartian and others into the Warner ranks. As a producer himself, he notes, “I was pretty judgmental — which of course is stupid, but there you go.”
Ultimately, Waronker says he realized “I was surrounded by great artists, so I had to keep reminding myself, ‘Don’t worry. Keep your mouth shut when something’s going good.’ If I had some idea that could make a record better, say something. I had an enormous amount of respect for the artists; a lot of time it’s staying the hell out of the way when you’re dealing with the kind of people I was dealing with and being as supportive as you can.”
Waronker says he applied that philosophy in his executive roles as well. “When you’re around somebody like (Ostin), if you’re paying attention and listening and asking questions, you’re gonna do OK,” he explains. “(Ostin) wanted a creative community as much as a record company. The relationship part of that was a big, big reason for my having any success as an executive.
“It was a time for experimentation and learning about what you could and couldn’t do. In those days it wasn’t just about the hits; at least in my mind, signing an artist was important because it gave the creative community a sense of what the company stood for. We really took advantage of that, big time. When I think about it now it’s like, ‘Jeez, how did that happen?’ But if you have a point of view and you have strong beliefs about what you’re doing, who you work with, what the company stands for, and you’re right, the rest sort of takes care of itself.”
Prince was, of course, one of those prestige acts on the Warner roster — and one who made Waronker realize the value of standing back and letting the artist follow his muse. “He was incredibly focused, very strong. He knew what we wanted. Every once in awhile he would open up, but mostly he knew what he was doing and wasn’t interested in (outside) ideas. So it was one of those things where he had it and he wasn’t cut out to sit and listen to somebody else talk about his music, which is good and bad because everybody can use help. But he was amazing, what can you say?”
Waronker and Ostin presided over what was considered a golden age for Warner until the early ‘90s, when a corporate reorganization after the death of Time Warner chairman Steve Ross in 1992 led to them leaving the company in 1994. With DreamWorks, Waronker steered the company to nearly five-dozen gold or better albums and more than two dozen Grammy Awards before he left.
“At the time I was starting to get antsy and (then-Warner chairman) Tom Whalley asked me to come in as a senior A&R executive who could help the younger A&R people and get involved, and that idea sounded good to me,” Waronker remembers. “So I went there and I found that it was fun. I like the young A&R (staffers); they were all very open and incredibly respectful, and that felt good. If someone is struggling, I know what that’s like and I know what to say to them.
“What was surprising to me was the amount of knowledge (current Warner staffers) had about what made us tick in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, early ‘90s, whatever. They tried to hold onto as much of that as they could. Again, you get the right people — that’s artists, too — and you’re gonna be in good shape.”
The upcoming Rock Hall honor does have Waronker reflecting on his career, of course. But he doesn’t expect that will turn into something more, like a memoir. “Nah, I don’t want to do that,” he says. “If you’re going to write you have to tell the truth, and I just didn’t want to do that. I’m not good with dishing stuff. Most of these books are a good attempt at telling the truth, but having to tell the real truth, then it becomes my truth, and I’m not interested in it.”
The Rock Hall induction ceremony takes place Nov. 8 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles and will stream live on Disney+, moving to Hulu the next day and an ABC special later. Performer inductees are Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Soundgarden and the White Stripes. Salt-N-Pepa and Warren Zevon will receive the musical influence award, with Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins and Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye receiving the musical excellence award.
“To finally be the headliner and not the maid of honor or the freakin’ bridesmaid?” Cyndi Lauper says with a laugh over Zoom. “It was pretty good.” The Brooklyn-born pop/rock legend is talking about her first-ever headlining show at New York’s Madison Square Garden last fall, part of her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour. These goodbye shows — an invigorating blast of rock energy, pop balladry pathos and vivid art – have been met with rave reviews from fans and critics alike. After overseas legs in Europe, Australia and Japan, Lauper is bringing her tour back to the States (and Canada) this summer for 24 final North American dates, kicking off July 17 in Mansfield, Mass.
Selling out arenas like MSG was a huge part of the reason Lauper – who will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this fall – wanted to do this farewell tour in the first place. While wrapping up mastering on a soundtrack companion to her 2023 career-retrospective documentary Let the Canary Sing, Lauper says that “everybody turned around and said, ‘Why don’t you do a farewell tour?’” The Grammy, Emmy and Tony winner was into the idea, but with a condition: “If I’m leaving, I would like to headline these places,” she recalls telling her team. “I don’t want to play theaters – I’m in theaters anyway,” she notes, tipping to the fact that she’s spent much of the last 15 years working in musical theater, between Broadway’s Tony-gobbling Kinky Boots and a long-gestating musical adaptation of the 1988 film Working Girl she’s still crafting with Theresa Rebeck.
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Now, for the tour’s North American swan song this summer, Lauper wants the chance to reconnect with fans in places she missed last fall. “I didn’t get to Philadelphia [last year]. I’m going to leave and not go to Philly?” she asks rhetorically ahead of a July 20 date in the City of Brotherly Love. “I wanted to say goodbye to everybody. I really do. That’s the end of this chapter.”
The final North American dates of her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour will feature some changes – including a setlist swap thanks to a famous fashion designer. Apart from alterations to the staging to accommodate outdoor venues, the Billboard Hot 100-topping singer is adding in some dance music for her fervent LGBTQ fanbase. “I am going to switch one song, because Christian Siriano said, ‘The gays want glamor.’ On Instagram, somebody wrote, ‘The gays love glamor, but they also love to dance. Would you mind just putting in a dance song from [the 2008 album] Bring Ya to the Brink?’ I thought that was really funny,” she admits. “So I said okay, fine.”
While it’s hard to quibble with an injection of upbeat dance music (just imagine if she sang “Sex Is in the Heel” from Kinky Boots? A stan can dream!) to the setlist, the show’s standout moments often come during her peerless ballads. “Time After Time” has found her duetting with guests like Sam Smith and Lucinda Williams, while “True Colors” and “Sally’s Pigeons” are staged in a way that’s as much performance art as pop music (Daniel Wurtzel’s “air fountain” factors heavily into those).
Lauper says it’s impossible for her to pick a standout moment from the shows, though – and she means that literally. “Once I step out there, I’m not there anymore because I’m in it,” she insists. “I used to work at Belmont walking the horses. I feel like one of those racehorses – you’re in it but you can’t think. You have to have one foot in reality and one foot in someplace else, and that place is where things come through you.” She once had a conversation with Prince about this very topic, which he likened to turning off a third eye. “He was like, ‘Part of you, you go out of your mind a little bit [on stage]. You’re not there. You can’t be, because if you are, then you have a third eye. And all of a sudden, whatever magic, otherworldly door it is that you’re knocking on is not going to open.’”
Accidents, however, can test that tenuous connection. Lauper describes one such incident during this tour’s “Sally’s Pigeons,” which features a white sheet undulating through the air thanks to an assortment of crisscrossed fans (not the flesh-and-blood type). “It’s so beautiful, right? Gorgeous. One time I saw that big sheet, it went right up — I had to look away because I was going to start laughing – it fell right on top of somebody. I saw everybody scrambling,” she chuckles. “It’s live, right? You don’t know what the heck (will happen).”
Mostly, however, she’s able to stay in the magic zone – though she admits to fighting some serious nerves prior to that first headlining MSG show. “Before I went on stage at Madison Square Garden, I was thinking, ‘You idiot. You had all your friends come here, and if you fall flat on your face, everybody and all your friends are going to see.’ Then I said to myself, ‘No, be positive. Do not think like that.’ I was like, ‘You know, it’s only rock n’ roll, but I like it. Whatever.’”
Lauper did not, for the record, fall flat on her face, literally or metaphorically – I was there, and it was one of the best concerts I’d seen in years, both performance-wise and conceptually. Much of the tour’s aesthetic traces to Lauper’s love for art, museums and eye-popping fashion; the tour boasts original collaborations with Wurtzel, Siriano, Geoffrey Mac, Brian Burke and Yayoi Kusama. “When you’re moving and you have all that color, it’s like a painting,” Lauper says in her gloriously unrepentant Brooklyn accent – a tone one doesn’t typically associate with a hifalutin arts discourse. “[Kusama] wore her art, and for me in the ‘80s, that’s kind of what I was doing,” she says of the Japanese artist whose distinct polka-dot palette broke through globally around when Lauper catapulted onto MTV and the Billboard charts. “I could kick myself for not knowing in the ‘80s – I had no idea about Kusama. But I was on the hamster wheel and peddling so fast that I did not go to museums (back then), which was sad for me.”
While the 71-year-old icon makes time to experience art in her life these days, it’s hard to escape the sneaking suspicion that, unlike many musicians who can’t keep away from the grind, it’s the hamster wheel that’s following her.
Prior to the tour’s next leg kicking off in July, Lauper is still tinkering with the music for Working Girl. “I am short four songs that I gotta do before the tour, but I think I can do it,” she sighs. “June is pretty full. My God, everything happened at once,” she says, noting that she also needs to start prepping for her induction. “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is on the eighth (of November), and (Working Girl) opens on the ninth. Wow. So, kill me now, right?”
Schedule overload notwithstanding, Lauper sounds honored to join many of the legends who inspired her in the Rock Hall’s ranks. “It’s a community of people, rockers that have changed the world,” she muses. “Here’s the thing: I still believe that rock n’ roll can save the world. I just want people to remember that we did make a difference. We can make a difference if we band together. We must come together as a community and make light and bring people together to make change, to do the good work.”
For Lauper, sharing her story in her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour is part of that. “I wanted to have people know who the hell has been singing to them all this time so they would have a connection. And maybe they would be inspired to look at their history, to understand themselves,” she opines. “Everybody has a different perspective. When you tell your story, it makes human beings closer. It makes communities. That’s very important. In the darkest time, remember – you write the chapters, you make light.”
He’s here to answer all your questions about how the Rock Hall works.
“Back in the day,” Chubby Checker tells Billboard from his home in New Jersey, “I said, ‘I don’t want to be in the Rock Hall when I’m dead. I want to smell my flowers when I’m here.’ And I’m smelling my flowers…a little late in the game, I would admit, but I’m still alive to see Chubby Checker in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
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Eligible since the first Rock Hall class in 1986, the 83-year-old responsible for “The Twist” and other dance sensations will finally arrive in the shrine during the Nov. 8 induction ceremony in Los Angeles — on his first nomination, no less. That’s come as a surprise, even shock, to many fans since the news broke about Checker’s induction, but the South Carolina native (born Ernest Evans) says it’s not something he’s been fretting about over the years.
“It’s another milestone — and the beat goes on,” he notes.
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Nevertheless, Checker famously protested outside of the Rock Hall museum in Cleveland back in 2002, but he clarifies that it wasn’t simply about his exclusion from the ranks. “I wanted people to know that Chubby’s music was not being played, that’s all it was,” he explains. “The protest was, ‘Please play Chubby’s music.’ The best thing for any artist is to get his music played, and my music wasn’t getting played and I was a little upset about it. You can walk into the supermarket and hear (sings) ‘Bennie and the Jets’…but not ‘The Twist,’ and you look around the supermarket and every company’s got some kind of twist product, you know? I did it very nicely. I didn’t try to cause any problems. I never protested anything in my life except that.”
Checker will, of course, enter the Rock Hall with ample credentials as a groundbreaker and architect. Inspired to pursue music after seeing country great Ernest Tubb perform at a South Carolina fair when he was four years old, Checker and his family moved to South Philadelphia and he began singing doo-wop as a youth. Nicknamed Chubby by a boss at the produce market where he worked, he auditioned as a teen for American Bandstand host Dick Clark, whose wife Barbara added Checker as a surname as a salute to Fats Domino.
Checker imitated Domino, Elvis Presley and other poplar singers at the time for a 1959 single called “The Class,” after which Clark suggested he take on “The Twist,” which was written by Hank Ballard — based on dances he saw teenagers doing in Tampa, Fla. It was only a modest success for him and his band, the Midnighters. Adding dance moves to his performance, Checker took the song to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during September 1960 and then for a second time in January 1962 — the only single to do that until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” decades down the road.
“‘The Twist’ gave us what we have on the dance floor — and is still giving us that,” says Checker, who despite his Philadelphia roots was a supporter of the Rock Hall being built in Cleveland, in deference to pioneering radio DJ Alan Freed. “Before (‘The Twist’), Elvis and Little Richard and Bill Haley and Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, they were doing the swing to their songs. Then Chubby Checker comes along and…the whole world changed.” Checker followed “The Twist” with other dance songs, including “Pony Time,” “The Fly,” “Limbo Rock,” “Let’s Twist Again” and a resurrection of the late ‘40s dance “The Hucklebuck.”
“Chubby Checker never left the dance floor,” he says. “I used to call myself the wheel that rock rolls on, because anyone after Chubby Checker who had a song that you could dance to, they were in my world, that I brought to the dance floor. Dancing to the beat is what we brought, and it’s still there — no matter what it is. It’s called the boogie, and the boogie is still going on. Someone once said, ‘Chubby, you want to do a disco song?’ ‘Why? I did that already.’”
In all, Checker has had 32 songs (and seven top 10 hits) on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2008 Billboard honored “The Twist” as No. 1 on the Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs list, which it held until the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” took the honor in 2021. Nevertheless, Checker notes, “it will always be the No. 1 song. There will be a number two No. 1 song, a number three No. 1 song, but (‘The Twist’) was the first and will always be the first.”
“The Twist” has also been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. The Rock Hall honored “The Twist” in 2018 by inducting the single as part of a new initiative — a practice that has not been repeated since.
Checker has no intention of recording anything new — “How am I gonna invent the wheel twice?” he asks — but still performs regularly. And that continuing demand, he says, has mitigated any disappointment he may have felt while waiting for his Rock Hall induction.
“Listen, I’m a blessed human being,” Checker says. “In spite of everything, my dreams come true every day. Every time I go on stage my dream comes true, my dream is renewed — that’s what keeps me going. I’m a blessed man in this world.”
Cyndi Lauper is bopping into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and she couldn’t be happier. “I’m humbled to be in the company of so many of my heroes – Aretha, Tina, Chaka, Joni, Wanda, to name just a few,” she shared in an Instagram post on Sunday (April 27), after the class of […]
