Heart

Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson ruled rock in the ’70s, made an effortless transition to the 1980s’ glammed-up take on the genre and eventually became elder stateswomen of Seattle’s white-hot ’90s music scene. Their Seattle-based band evolved out of the ’60s group The Army, taking the name Heart in the early ’70s. With Ann on lead vocals and flute and Nancy on rhythm guitar and vocals, their 1975 debut, Dreamboat Annie, was a smash in Canada before its release in the United States, where the storming “Crazy On You” and the seductive “Magic Man” fast became radio staples. Heart’s 1977 follow-up, Little Queen, contained the guitar epic “Barracuda”, one of the decade’s defining rock songs. The albums that followed, including 1980’s Bébé le Strange, saw the band trying their hand at New Wave and big-ticket AOR before hitting it big again in 1985 with a self-titled album that channelled hard rock’s pomp and hookiness on the towering “What About Love” and the swooning “These Dreams”. The two albums that followed reeled off even more hits, including the power-ballad standard “Alone” and the blues-tinged “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You”. In the ’90s, with Seattle’s thriving music scene garnering national attention, the Wilsons stripped down their sound, forming the unplugged act The Lovemongers; that band was included on the grunge-chronicling Singles soundtrack and remained the sisters’ focus until the early 2000s, when they assembled a new band under the Heart name and hit the road. Heart have toured off and on since then, but their legacy—as evidenced by their Guitar Hero inclusion, their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and the countless bands that have blended soaring hooks and chugging riffs in their honour—still burns brightly.