The funny thing about Heart is that the group began without the two people that would make the band so great and so significant: singer Ann Wilson and her guitar-playing kid sister Nancy. In fact, Heart were born out of a regulation all-male band, The Army, which formed in Seattle in the mid-60s. In 1971 they took on the name Heart. But it was only after Ann joined the band in 1972, followed by her younger sister Nancy in 1974, that Heart would find a signature sound and global fame.
There were female rock stars before Ann and Nancy. In the late 60s, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick and Mama Cass Elliott were prominent figures in American rock’n’roll. And in the late 70s, when Heart had their first hit records, so did other groundbreaking female artists, such as Patti Smith, Kate Bush and Debbie Harry. What made the success of the Wilson sisters so remarkable was that Heart operated in the most male-dominated arena in music: hard rock.
Moreover, they achieved that success on their own terms. A record company ad for Heart’s 1976 debut Dreamboat Annie pictured Ann and Nancy in a bare-shouldered close-up with a tag line that hinted at lesbian incest: “It was only our first time!” But the Wilsons would not give in to sexploitation. They might have been sex symbols, but they were musicians first. And in a recording career that now spans four decades, Heart have created a number of era-defining albums with total sales in excess of 35 million.
Across the years there have been peaks and falls. Landmark 70s albums, including Little Queen and Dog & Butterfly, had Heart touted as “the female Led Zeppelin” – somewhat erroneously, given that Ann and Nancy were the only women in a group of six.
A decline in the early 80s was followed by a spectacular comeback in the second half of that decade, in which the Wilsons became big-haired icons of the MTV age.
In the 90s, the formation of the sisters’ side project, The Lovemongers, led to an 11-year gap between Heart albums, with the band on hiatus for half of that time. But Heart’s renaissance was completed with three albums rooted in their classic 70s sound, before another hiatus in 2019. But all was not lost, and in late 2023 the band reconvened for a trio of shows. Weeks later, an extensive tour of the US and Europe was announced. As Ann Wilson once said: “It’s rock’n’roll, man. It’s big, deep and it’s what Heart does best.”
...and one to avoid
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