Chiefs superfan Melissa Etheridge is first-time nominee to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Singer/songwriter. Oscar winner. Grammy winner. Author. Longtime gay rights activist. Breast cancer survivor. Chiefs superfan.
Now Melissa Etheridge, a native of Leavenworth, Kansas, can finally add first-time nominee to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to her list.
The hall of fame in Cleveland announced 17 nominees Wednesday. Etheridge is one of 10 first-timers in an eclectic group that includes Mariah Carey, the Black Crowes, Phil Collins, Iron Maiden, Billy Idol and Wu-Tang Clan.
“It’s great to finally be in the room, and the rest is up to the voters,” Etheridge told Billboard from her home near Los Angeles. “I think it means a lot more to my friends and family around me, ’cause they’ve been kind of going, ‘What’s wrong with these people?!’ for a long time.
“But it’s really nice to be seen. As a musician you hope that your work has a lasting impression and you hope that you’re still actively participating on rocking people. So it feels really good.”
After attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, Etheridge released her self-titled debut album in 1988. The lead single, “Bring Me Some Water,” became her first Grammy nomination.
Her big break came with her 1993 platinum album, “Yes I Am,” her fourth studio album. The song, “Come to My Window” from that album earned her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Her top-40 hits include “I’m the Only One” from that album and “If I Wanted To.”
She has two Grammys, and a Best Original Song Oscar for the song “I Need to Wake Up” from the 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Her newest album, “Rise,” debuts March 27. The accompanying tour includes a stop in the St. Louis area in May.
Etheridge is a fan of Kansas City sports teams, but especially the Chiefs. In 2025 as the team chased a historic Super Bowl three-peat, she wrote a song for football fans who had grown tired of the team.
Last year Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly awarded Etheridge a Kansas Governor’s Arts Award recognizing her decades of work in the music industry and her hands-on advocacy of Kansans.
In 2024, Etheridge released a two-part docuseries, “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken,” that followed her meeting with incarcerated women at the Topeka Correctional Facility who inspired her to write a song and perform it for them.
Other first-time nominees to the Rock Hall include Collins, New Edition, Pink, Shakira, Luther Vandross, Lauryn Hill, INXS and Wu-Tang Clan.
An international panel of more than 1,200 artists, music industry professionals and historians will choose the new members based on “an artist’s impact on music culture, influence on other musicians that have followed, as well as the scope and longevity of their career and body of work.”
The public can vote, too. The top vote-getters from the fan vote will form a single ballot in the final tally, equal to the ones cast by the experts. Voting has begun at rockhall.com.
The 2026 inductees will be announced in April, followed by a ceremony later this year.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 1:14 PM.
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