Four hours and 22 minutes is a long time to do anything other than sleep, even watching a state-of-the-art Rock and Roll Hall of Fame awards show featuring Willie Nelson, Elton John, Sheryl Crow, Jimmy Page and Stevie Nicks performed and many more.
Still, it’s a testament to Missy Elliott’s almost superhuman talent and vision that when the show reached the four-hour mark, she had the entire audience on their feet and performed a visually and musically explosive medley of her greatest hits – including “Get Ur”. “Freak On,” “The Rain,” and closer “Lose Control” — as she rocked the stage in an all-gold glitter suit, accompanied by rappers, a DJ, about 30 svelte dancers, and a stunning video presentation that stretched across the stage the entire width of the Barclays Center floor. This won’t surprise anyone who was lucky enough to see a performance by the first female rapper inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it’s something we see far too rarely these days. She even noted that her mother had seen her live for the first time that night, “because I didn’t want her to see me talking about sluts and being a one-minute man.”
But before you jump to the end of the show, which was livestreamed for the first time on Disney+ and is now available to watch, check out the other key moments below. Serious music fans will probably want to watch the whole thing – we’re skipping performances from Sheryl Crow (with Nicks, Olivia Rodrigo and Peter Frampton), Chaka Khan (including a surreal duet with Sia), tributes to groundbreaking hip-hop DJ Kool Herc, Zelig-like musician Al Kooper and “Soul Train” founder Don Cornelius and more – but if you don’t have four hours and 22 minutes to spare, there’s a guide below.
Carrie Underwood’s revealing George Michael cover
The late George Michael was recorded by Andrew Ridgely, his childhood friend and former Wham! bandmate, whom few people recognized because of his long-lost hairline. Three performances followed, with Miguel opening with a strong “Careless Whisper” (accompanied by the E Street Band’s Jake Clemons on saxophone), a mediocre “Faith” by Adam Levine and finally a stunning version of “One More Try”. by Carrie Underwood, who brought the audience to its feet with an emotional, stirring performance that made you wonder why she doesn’t sing songs like this all the time. The tribute video also featured some hilarious quotes from Michael, particularly when he said that the two records he first owned as a child were by the Supremes and Tom Jones, noting that his music fell somewhere between the two .
New Edition: Create a Spinners tribute band for the ages
Anyone who grew up near an FM radio in America in the 1970s listened to a lot of R&B, and one of the most famous groups was the Spinners. For a medley of three of their biggest hits, New Edition wore black pants and matching maroon velor jackets and danced in sync. Hearing Bobby Brown wail on “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” was a completely unexpected but intoxicating moment.
New Edition’s Johnny Gill, Michael Bivens, Ralph Tresvant, Ronnie DeVoe and Bobby Brown (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic) FilmMagic
St. Vincent runs bravely up that hill
In another unexpected pairing, Kate Bush – who skipped the ceremony but left a touching message of thanks – was snapped up by Outkast’s Big Boi, who joked: “I feel like the White House press secretary for Kate Bush.” After hearing about his lifelong After speaking to his fan base and saying, “I’m the kid in ‘Stranger Things'” (a reference to the show that brought new popularity to the decades-old song), he said, “What I love about Kate’s music” is that you never knows what you’re going to hear next.” The tribute video was fascinating, combining clips from Bush with testimonials from Peter Gabriel and especially Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, who essentially discovered her as a teenager and remembered how she came to her went home, met her family and then played him “forty or fifty songs.” St. Vincent then showed how difficult it is to sing these songs by performing a solid, brave and relatively restrained version of “Running Up That Hill,” in which she wisely didn’t try to emulate Bush’s intensity.
Willie Nelson gets a hilarious introduction from Dave Matthews and appears with Chris Stapleton and Sheryl Crow
There is probably no living songwriter with a catalog that rivals Willie Nelson’s, nor many before. Now 90, as Dave Matthews noted in his introduction, he wrote his first song in 1940, lived to see Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” recorded in 1961 and has released 72 albums. Somehow he managed it despite being a marijuana smoker extraordinaire. “When I first met Willie,” Matthews remembers, “I got so high I forgot how to breathe. And then we got higher, and then we got higher, and then Willie said, ‘Is everyone high?'” Nelson took the stage and performed three songs, accompanied by Chris Stapleton (on “Whiskey River”) and Sheryl Crow ( “On Crazy”) and “On the Road Again” with both and Matthews – his voice was a little shaky and he played sitting down, but he gave a very gracious acceptance speech and played two solos on his legendary, battered nylon string guitar.
Willie Nelson receives his statuette from Dave Matthews (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic) FilmMagic
A surprise appearance from Jimmy Page
Link Wray, who died in 2005, was such a fundamental pioneer of rock and roll guitar that most guitarists today don’t know who he was. But the video that aired featured everyone from Jimmy Page and Iggy Pop to Jeff Beck and Robbie Robertson paying him reverent homage, and the audience jumped when Page suddenly appeared on stage shortly after he appeared in the video appeared at Wray’s performance. Wielding his iconic Gibson double-neck guitar, he played a seductive, reverent version of Wray’s “Rumble,” a song you know even if you think you don’t.
Bernie Taupin addresses the elephant in the room
Elton John told an oft-told story about his lyricist and “best friend of 65 years,” but the story was no less fresh as he marveled at the evolution between his first and second albums: “How did we make that leap?” a short time?” – noting that even though they hadn’t really fought in their prime, he was “often disgusted by my behavior.” And yet he also noted that they had recently completed an album that “give you a will be a total surprise.”
During Taupin’s acceptance speech, about three hours into the show, the moment finally arrived: He said how honored he was to share the honor with so many “articulate” (air quotes) women and black artists – the evening’s only direct reference to Rolling Stone and Hall of Fame founder Jann Wenner’s recent distasteful comments led to him being removed from the Hall’s board of directors.
Robbie Robertson receives a cross-generational tribute from Elton John, Chris Stapleton, Sheryl Crow and Brittany Howard
The hall places great emphasis on the “In Memoriam” section, in which many relatively little-known band members are honored alongside superstars. And in a year that saw the deaths of a sobering number of great musicians, it seemed inappropriate to honor just one – until the segment ended with a photo of the band’s Robbie Robertson and the house band performed the group’s 1968 classic “The Weight.” . Four generations of singers – Elton John, Sheryl Crow, Chris Stapleton and Brittany Howard – each took on a verse and then joined forces for the song’s final fifth verse, stunningly demonstrating how fundamental the band and this song were to them all were.
Even in her absence, anger raged against the machine
Since their split in 2000, Rage Against the Machine have never been there when you need them. They spent the George W. Bush years reuniting for tours during the Obama administration and were part of a long-overdue reunion tour last summer when singer Zack de la Rocha injured his knee and the tour was postponed indefinitely . But the group’s explosive influence was vividly described in Ice-T’s stirring tribute video and introductory speech: “I think Rage has the greatest rock lyric of all time: ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you told me'” – and guitarist Tom Morello’s acceptance speech. Always an inspired speaker, he noted that the often bickering band members “have different views on many things, including recording,” but acknowledged not only them but also the “fifth member of the band”—the group’s fans—and asked noted that the presidents of Chile and Finland “all spent time in our mosh pits.”
His speech gained momentum as he continued, “Can music change the world?” The whole damn goal is to change the world!” and ended by exhorting people to make a difference in any way they can, be it through Activism, starting a band or simply following their conscience instead of orders. “It’s time to change the world, brothers and sisters,” he concluded, “or at least cause a lot of trouble.”
As fans exited the venue after a very long night, they saw the following words written on a boarded up window across Flatbush Avenue: “THANK YOU RATM.”