A look at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2026 inductees and how they were honored

Detailed summary

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has inducted its 2026 class of 18 musical luminaries at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has inducted its 2026 class of 18 musical luminaries at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

Artists become eligible for the hall 25 years after their first music release.

Here’s a look at this year’s Rock Hall class, a few of their defining songs and who inducted them.

Vandross was an R&B singer whose velvet-voiced love songs made him one of the definitive voices of the 1980s and ’90s. Vandross died in 2005. Key songs: “Never Too Much,” “Dance With My Father,” “I’d Rather.”

Inducted by Oprah Winfrey. Usher sang a medley of his songs, including “Here and Now” and “So Amazing.”

A trailblazing Brooklyn rapper in the late 1980s, MC Lyte became the first female rapper to release a full solo album, “Lyte as a Rock.” Her hard-edged rhymes brought a political consciousness that was growing in hip-hop at the time. Key songs: “Keep on Keepin’ On,” “Cold Rock a Party,” “Ruffneck.”

Sade is a British band most prominent in the 1980s that blended jazz, smooth-and-sultry R&B and sophisti-pop, led by a Nigerian-born singer of the same name. Key songs: “Smooth Operator,” “No Ordinary Love,” “Like a Tattoo,” “Kiss of Life.” She did not appear.

Inducted by singer Andra Day. Singer Sienna Spiro sang their biggest hit, “Smooth Operator.”

He was honored for bringing the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, James Brown and the Doors to American living rooms, and for consistently featuring Black artists despite network pressure to keep television segregated. He died in 1974.

Opening of the article, excerpted from Toronto Star. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.