LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cyndi Lauper turned “True Colors” into a defiant call for courage and the music of Outkast, Soundgarden and the White Stripes brought waves of emotion Saturday night at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Partway through the song, Lauper shouted the line “don’t be afraid!,” thrust her fist in the air and kept it there as the music stopped for a long and dramatic stretch.

She was then joined by Raye to sing “Time After Time” and Avril Lavigne for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” backed by an all-female band that included Gina Schock of the Go-Go’s. As Lauper called for the ladies to sing with her, Salt-N-Pepa — who earlier in the night donned their old tri-color jackets to rock the crowd with “Push It” for their induction — came dancing out and joined her.

Chappell Roan, who inducted Lauper while wearing a huge, ornamented, showgirl-style headpiece, said Lauper redefined what a pop star could look like, sound like, sing like.”

Lauper looked at Roan during her speech when she said, “I know that I stand on the shoulders of the women in the industry that came before me. And my shoulders are broad enough to have the women that came after me stand on mine.”

Lauper came back for an all-star jam and sang a verse of inductee Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help From My Friends” along with Teddy Swims, Bryan Adams and Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes. Cocker’s was one of several posthumous inductions, including a moving tribute to late Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.

The power of women in music was called out loudly earlier in the evening at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles during the induction of Salt-N-Pepa.

“This is for every woman who picked up a mic when they told her she couldn’t,” Cheryl “Salt” James said in a rousing speech accepting her, Sandra “Pepa” Denton and DJ Spinderella’s entrance into the hall.

James brought up their fight to reclaim their master recordings from Universal Music Group.

“The industry still doesn’t want to play fair, Salt-N-Pepa have never been afraid of a fight,” James said.

They took the stage for a medley of their hits, opening with “Shoop” then sliding into “Let’s Talk About Sex” before En Vogue joined them for their joint hit “What a Man.”

James apologized to the fans who “got in trouble for cutting their hair like us,” a line that reverberated later when Roan said that Lauper showed you could “have whatever hair color you want.”

Outkast didn’t perform together for the first time since 2016 as some had hoped, but the duo stood together on stage, surrounded by a crew of friends and cohorts as they gave grateful speeches after doing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would go first.

Andre 3000 gave a long, rambling funny speech — “I’m freestylin’ y’all!” — that ended in tears when he talked about their very beginnings in a basement “dungeon” in Atlanta in the early 1990s.

He choked out the words, “Great things start in little rooms.”

Andre sat out the performance but Big Boi, wearing shorts and a fur coat, started off an express tour through the Atlanta duo’s discography that included Tyler the Creator, JID and Killer Mike.

Emotions ran deep during Soundgarden’s segment of the night, starting with the induction speech of Jim Carrey, the actor and Soundgarden superfan who seemed to be fighting off tears throughout as he talked about Cornell, who died from suicide in 2017.

“When you looked into his eyes, it’s like eternity was staring back,” Carrey said. “For all time, his voice will continue to light up the ether like a Tesla coil.”

Each of his band mates, all major godfathers of the Seattle grunge scene, paid their own tearful tributes.

One of Cornell’s daughters, Lilian, spoke while another, Toni, sang a quiet rendition of his song “Fell on Black Days.”