Janet Jackson, Radiohead, Def Leppard and Stevie Nicks will join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next year at its 34th annual induction ceremony, along with the Cure, Roxy Music and the Zombies, the organization announced on Thursday.
The class of 2019, which will formally enter the pantheon on March 29 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, represents a varied cross-section of the last half-century of pop music, with giants of classic and alternative rock, as well as a couple of acts from zones that the hall still glances at only occasionally: dance music and crowd-pleasing 1980s pop-metal.
The seven inductees — the biggest class since 2004 — are mostly uncontroversial choices, which may help the hall duck the criticism it has often received because of its opaque internal politics. Three acts — Def Leppard, Roxy Music and Nicks — were accepted the first time they appeared on the ballot, while Radiohead and the Cure made it in the second time around.
The artists who didn’t make the cut, including LL Cool J, Kraftwerk and the funk band Rufus, say as much about the makeup of the hall as those that did. Here are some of the themes and inevitable squabbles of the latest Rock Hall class.