Lenny Kravitz Talks Rock Hall Nomination: ‘It’s a Beautiful Thing’
If form is a guide, Lenny Kravitz ought to be a shoo-in for the Rock Hall class of 2024.
With a new album out in May, the veteran rocker has been soaking up the plaudits on the awards trail, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, presented earlier this month (with a savage roasting by his daughter Zo? Kravitz), and the Music Icon Award at the 2024 People’s Choice Awards, held last month in Santa Monica, Calif.
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The most-coveted music award of them all potentially awaits, a spot in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, for which Kravitz is nominated alongside the likes of Mary J. Blige, Oasis, Dave Matthews Band, Cher, Mariah Carey, Kool & the Gang and more.
Nothing is certain. Though Kravitz is taking the time to smell the flowers.
“It’s a beautiful thing. It’s lovely to receive flowers,” he explained when he stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, for an interview which aired Wednesday night, March 20.
The “Fly Away” singer’s recording career took off in the early ‘90s, following a bidding war among the-then five major labels. He decided on Virgin, and the label’s promise that the multi-hyphenate would have total creative control.
“I promised myself,” he told host Jimmy Fallon, “when I was coming up I never took the time to enjoy those kinds of things. I was always moving forward, not thinking about the past or what was happening. So, I said when this stuff starts happening again, I’m going to take the time, and I’m going to enjoy the moments because it’s beautiful.”
Awards are a bonus for Kravitz, who is readying the May 24 release of Blue Electric Light, his 12th studio album. The collection, he remarked, is about “celebration, life, humanity, sexuality, sensuality, spirituality.”
Its title track came to Kravitz in a dream during the final stretch of recording sessions in the Bahamas. He cut it the next day, and guitarist Craig Ross persuaded Lenny to dump his previously planned album title.
Blue Electric Light is “just that vibration of love, of god, of spirit,” he explained to Fallon.
Kravitz will support the album with a summer European arena and festival tour, kicking off June 23 at Sporthalle in Hamburg, Germany. But first, the rock star and his band gave a taste of things to come with a late-night performance of album track “Human,” a song about us “spiritual beings having a human existence, the journey, man.”
Watch the late-night interview and performance below.
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