Whitney Houston inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

It was a dulled down Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2020 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. The ceremony that aired on Saturday on HBO had a two-hour runtime.

In addition to this year's class — Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, the Notorious B.I.G., Whitney Houston, T. Rex and the Doobie Brothers — Irving Azoff and Jon Landau were inducted as non-performers, receiving the Ahmet Ertegun Award.

A video tribute to the late Eddie Van Halen was also part of the ceremony, including testimonials from Slash, Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Tom Morello, with the latter calling him "the Mozart of our generation."

To start with this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Whitney Houston received an introduction from Alicia Keys. She said, "We all know how her unprecedented success brought Black women into the absolute highest reaches of the music industry's pantheon. We all know her music will live forever."

Rick Rubin, David Fincher, Mark Ronson, Jimmy Iovine and Miley Cyrus all paid homage to the Nine Inch Nails band, but St. Vincent's Annie Clark had the best quote: "They created a world that is tumbling toward hell in the best possible way."

One of seven posthumous inductees this year, the Notorious B.I.G. received a lot of love during the tribute to his game-changing delivery and wordplay.

Ringo Starr, who directed the 1972 T. Rex concert doc Born to Boogie was on hand to pay homage to his late friend Marc Bolan, the sinuous frontman of the glam rock pioneers.