The 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees

The 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees were announced at 6:00am EST on February 12th. Inductees will be revealed in late April, and will be honored at a ceremony in Los Angeles in the fall.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's chairman opened up in a long interview that he is actively looking for synergies between his role as chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and his day job as president of entertainment enterprises at iHeartMedia.

In an interview with Bobby Bones, Sykes went into a lot of detail about the inclusion of different genres, and how he has steered the Hall of Fame back to what he considers its roots. Things got more interesting around the 13 minute mark when Bones asked Sykes about inducting problematic artists into the Rock Hall:

Bones: Is there ever a struggle to separate the art from the artist? Meaning if it turns out somebody that's really crushed it over course of 20, 30 or 40 years but isn't that great of a person, or there's been some stories... Do you ever just go we can't do it because they're kind of a douchebag?

Sykes: The answer is no. We're actually blind to as you would say, "the douchebag filter" and it really is based on who they are. And by the way, some of the rock and roll artists were bad boys and bad girls and they broke some rules and that's kind of why we liked them growing up, because we could live vicariously through them.

That's a nice answer, but is it actually true? The Baseball Hall of Fame does have a "character clause" to include sportsmanship and PEDs in its criteria, but the Pro Football Hall tries to keep it solely to on-field accomplishments (but voters don't always hold to it). The Rock Hall famously has no rules or criteria for induction.

Where does the Rock Hall actually stand on this through their recent actions? We see Kanye West's candidacy in 2027 as the ultimate test of their mettle, but the disappearance of The Smiths on the ballot since 2016 can only really be explained by Morrissey's controversial political stances. Sykes would only mention "bad boy" behavior of Keith Richards as an example of them not having a "douchebag filter," but it doesn't seem they give Nominating Committee blinders when they walk into the meeting.

The other notable part of the interview was when Bones asked about what Sykes actually does at iHeart Media, and in the context of discussing the brand and the power of having 800 radio stations, he dropped this anecdote about talking to his bosses when he was offered to take over the Rock Hall:

Sykes: Bob [Pittman] was the first one to say, "Hey, they offered you [the chairmanship of] the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, you take it - you take it. Why? You build it as a part of the iHeart ecosystem." And sure enough, a lot of the artists that have played the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have gone on to play our Festival. LL Cool J, Lionel Richie, and now Sheryl Crow will play this year... and Dolly Parton you know we want her to come and do a cameo at the Festival this year. So to me it it's all part of, again the ecosystem, not to overuse the word or term, but to have Bob and Rich [Bressler] saying to me, "we're good, whatever you want to do, let's try it." And the day I don't make enough money or we're not, I'm not promoting enough well that'll be my last day, but I think so far it's been a great ride with wonderful people.

It's been hard not to notice the shift in the tone of the Rock Hall since Sykes took over. The overlap of talent with iHeart events is real and it has crept onto the ballots (hello Lenny Kravitz). Is this good for the Rock Hall? Unless you're a fan of more corporate blandness, the answer is clearly no. It's not like the Hall of Fame was struggling to get talent in the pre-Sykes era. The sameness of it all (hello Jelly Roll) now just takes away from what was great about the Hall of Fame.

Sykes has done some positive things since taking over for Jann Wenner, but the iHeartification of the Hall of Fame is not one of them.

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