The 43rd annual Kennedy Center Honors broadcast is set to air on Sunday, nearly six months later than usual — the delay due, of course, to the COVID-19 pandemic. Garth Brooks, Joan Baez, violinist Midori, Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Allen are this year’s honorees. Gloria Estefan, who received the honor in 2017, is hosting for the second time.
The Kennedy Center Honors are highly competitive because they cover all aspects of arts and entertainment – not just music. When the awards program originated in 1978, the focus in its music selections was on classical, opera, jazz and traditional pop. The Honors slowly came to also acknowledge more popular forms of music. In 1991, Roy Acuff became the first country honoree. In 1994, Aretha Franklin became the first R&B honoree. In 1997, in the program’s 20th year, Bob Dylan became the first rock honoree.
The Kennedy Center Honors don’t, as a rule, award artists posthumously – though they have made two exceptions in the past five years for key members of top groups: Glenn Frey of the Eagles (2016) and Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire (2019). But they have never inducted a solo artist posthumously, so Michael Jackson, Prince and Whitney Houston, among many others, appear to be out of luck.
Because the Kennedy Center Honors were slow to embrace popular music forms, and because they also honor non-music performers, they are terribly backlogged in their music honors.
To remind their selection committee of the wealth of music talent still waiting to be honored — and to get the rest of us primed for this year’s show — here’s a list of 40 music stars who are overdue for Kennedy Center Honors. They’re listed in alphabetical order.
ABBA
Aerosmith
Alabama
Herb Alpert
Burt Bacharach
Bee Gees
Eric Clapton
Judy Collins
The Everly Brothers
Roberta Flack
Fleetwood Mac
John Fogerty
Four Seasons
Vince Gill
Emmylou Harris
The Isley Brothers
Janet Jackson
Gladys Knight
Kris Kristofferson
Patti LaBelle
Brenda Lee
Madonna
Barry Manilow
Johnny Mathis
Sérgio Mendes
Bette Midler
Ronnie Milsap
Joni Mitchell
Van Morrison
Queen
Run-D.M.C.
The Rolling Stones
Bob Seger
Rod Stewart
Sting
George Strait
Randy Travis
U2
Dionne Warwick
Neil Young
The Kennedy Center Honors will be broadcast Sunday, June 6, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. The show will also be available to stream live and on demand on the CBS app and Paramount+.
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