What does Sup Forums think of Heart?

What does Sup Forums think of Heart?

Top Tier momrock imo

Very mediocre buttrock for white trash chicks in the 70s.

Dreamboat Annie [Mushroom, 1976]

As apparently spontaneous pop phenomena go, a hardish folk-rock group led by two women is a moderately interesting one, especially when their composing beats that of the twixt-Balin Starplane, whom they otherwise recall. I said moderately. C+

Dog and Butterfly [Portrait, 1978]

Georgia Christgau: "Robert Plant understands his place as second-string guitar posing as lead singer. He should--he thought it up. But this idea is belittling to Ann Wilson. `I have a great voice!' her songs seem to say, and so she may--but what is it doing preening here among all these seamy heavy metal types?" C

Bebe Le Strange [Epic, 1980]

So Nancy Wilson breaks up with her fella, soundman Mike Fisher, who naturally departs the band, along with his brother Roger, who happens to be the guitarist. And whether it's the absence of pomp-rockish Roger, stripping to a five-piece, or what hell hath no fury like, suddenly they're lean and mean and playing to the sisters--title cut's a fan letter to the female Johnny B. Goode, who I guess is Nancy, now playing a lot of lead. Take note, fellas--as Zep rips go, this one is something special, and not just for its sexual politics. Unfortunately, things go gushy at the end with an Ann-penned love song. Men--who needs 'em? B+

Greatest Hits/Live [Epic, 1980]

Even their hits were never all that great beyond Bebe Le Strange and the usual coupla others--without "Barracuda" and "Crazy on You," they would never have gotten to wear stupid expensive clothes on the back cover or joke around in the studio for a couple hours and boil the results down into a tape collage called "Hit Single" ha ha ha. And with most of the hits all the way studio, the live stuff is long on covers, permitting Ann to run her suboperatic chops smack into "Unchained Melody" and "Tell It Like It Is." But the live "Bebe Le Strange" and the distaff "Rock and Roll" make them sound like contenders we need nevertheless. C+

Bad Animals [Capitol, 1987]

You'd never know Ann Wilson was riding the catchy intricacies of hired songwriting unless you listened more carefully than the resulting trifles deserve or her relentless overkill permits. And although the camp follower in me is sometimes tickled by the mismatch, it was the professional in me who noticed it. Only in the title cut, where a failed opera singer throws down the gauntlet for the heavy metal boors she's sworn to defend, does the end justify the means. C

Everything Rocks and Nothing Ever Dies [1990s]

Jupiter's Daughter was a pretty good album, it would have probably been a huge hit if it had come out in 1984 instead of 2004.

get off my board, christgau-poster

i think it's funny how people think she's good at guitar. girls can't play guitar

I remember hearing an interview with Ann Wilson when the song "All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You" was a big hit. There apparently was some media backlash because of the casual sex angle, especially in light of AIDS... she answered "well, maybe they had safe sex"... um, Ann, did you not listen to the lyrics???

Ann's voice has aged amazingly well compared to most male rock vocalists.

Misogynists go back to /r9k/.

Yeah, they were nothing without Roger Fisher.

They were great until around 1980.

Anne has one of the greatest voices in rock.

My parents saw them with John Mellencamp in 1982. My dad said most of the people were there for Mellencamp and didn't particularly seem interested in Heart especially because the album they were touring at the time (Private Auditions) was not a big hit while Mellencamp was at his peak. He said Heart's setlist was very diverse with all their hits+covers+B-sides.

They saw Heart again a couple years later and damn, the average age of the audience had dropped to like 13 or something. My dad said the old hits like Barracuda were played in a hurry and without much commitment and they mostly just emphasized on their more recent songs. It was a decent show but not as good as the '82 one.

Their career low point was probably Passionworks which came out in the mid-80s when they were struggling to adapt to the changing times and didn't quite know what to do.

Yeah it was kind of like Aerosmith and Alice Cooper who couldn't figure out how to move out of the 70s and to adapt to the MTV age so they hired professional song doctors and turned into power ballad/spandex glop.

A lot of 70s artists fell into a black hole as the Reagan years began, trying to adapt to the new decade and sound contemporary.

The lead single from Private Auditions was "This Man Is Mine", which doesn't seem like that great of a choice to me. It's not at all shocking that it failed to chart.

It went to #33 on the Billboard Hot 100, but did nothing to move copies of the album it was attached to.

>didn't quite know what to do.
The record company (Capitol) told them exactly what to do, and they succeeded with the album entitled, "Heart". They basically told them to glam it up, to wear lace and leather. They also had outside writers come in to help the band.

Ann and Nancy are good performers and musicians BUT their songwriting has never been entirely solid or consistent. The mid-80s was as someone else said a difficult time when they were trying to figure out how to stay on the charts. They didn't particularly like the idea of being MTV video vixens and using professional songwriters, but it brought them back on the charts and made $$$, so whaddya gonna do? They had to sell out for a new lease on life.

I'm talking right before Capitol, in 1982-84 when they had lapsed into irrelevance and bad-selling albums.

Barracuda makes me want to kill myself

Yeah. And I was continuing the timeline. Also, forgot to add to my original post; If you want to talk about corporate rock, the "Heart" album was a perfect example.

Music sales as a whole dropped dramatically in 1980-82 due to the economic recession and some other factors. It wasn't just Heart, everyone sold a lot fewer albums at that time. Just like Aerosmith and Alice Cooper, their early 80s period is pretty obscure and little-known except to diehard fans.

I took a class in college taught by one their songwriters. Not a good first impression.

I've heard people over the years tell me that TMIM was a good song but a commercial success it was not. I'm sure that the band themselves and Sony management didn't consider it any kind of success either.

While true, quite a few artists like John Mellencamp, Fleetwood Mac, and J. Geils Band had major sellers at that time.

That's wrong though. Even those artists you mention like Fleetwood Mac had a hard time moving records in 1982 due to the recession.

Name and school? If you don't feel like outing them, I understand.

Well, it's like I said. PA and Passionworks flopped, so Sony cut them from the roster. Capitol then offered to take them aboard, but in doing so they had to accept the advice of record label management who told them what songs to write and how to dress. Selling out is a dirty word, but Ann and Nancy probably would have been cleaning toilets at Burger King otherwise. They shot back up the charts in the late 80s and made enough money that they didn't need to work anymore.

literally the biggest selling album of all time was released in 1982

Anyone interested enough in the band probably already knows who I'm talking about, or otherwise could easily dig. It's just a community college. Songwriting class.

Momrock? Granrock.

Thriller? That came out at the end of the year and slowly shot up the charts through 1983, which also coincided with the end of the recession. Actually Thriller marked the end of the early 80s record sale slump.

Oh, and it was a running joke that people would always ask if she wrote Barracuda, and then she would say if she did wouldn't be at a community college. Really cool. But rock bands having outside songwriters is bleh

I'm not going to dig, but if it's a community college in the Seattle area, I'm going to guess it's Central.

Doesn't really matter. If you know who it is then it's all there.

So what other artists managed to dig themselves out of a hole and come back? I can think of Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Neil Young, maybe Judas Priest with Painkiller.

Desmond Child saved the careers of I dunno how many washed-up 70s rockers. Too bad Iggy Pop didn't think to hire him.

Yes with 90120

George Harrison with Cloud Nine

No. It took me 20 seconds of not being lazy. Shoreline Community College. Hey, at least she doing something related to music.

Well, he had Bowie, who made him hit big. Decades in the future.

>George Harrison
Damn, I forgot about that. I guess the Traveling Wilburys helped too, but that was some comeback because Harrison hadn't had a charting hit in a decade or more. By the mid-80s, he was about as irrelevant as it was possible to be and suddenly he gets a top 10 hit out of Cloud Nine.

Oh yeah no, I'm not trashing her at all, she was really cool, and very skilled in a pop context. I'm just thoroughly unimpressed by rock bands using outside songwriters, and that was when I first discovered Heart.

Johnny Cash with the American recordings. I mean, the guy had been a nonentity for 25 years when Rick Rubin brought him back.

I completely get what you were saying, and agree with your thoughts of hiring outside songwriters for a rock band.

Obviously RHCP with Californication. They were incredibly fortunate that John Frusciante didn't die of drugs in the mid-90s and they were able to get him back.

cool now
lame then

Maybe Madonna and Ray of Light? I mean, nobody had really cared about her since LOAP eleven years earlier.

I just remember them being butthurt at Sarah Palin for using Barracuda as her campaign song. Gee, I just assumed Palin liked the song when she was a teenager in the 70s.

I'd be pretty butthurt too if some politician started using my intellectual property without my permission.

They offered to pay royalties, but the band said they'd just donate the money to Obama's campaign.

Besides, last I checked, their catalog would probably be owned by Sony or Capitol or something and assuming you paid the record label royalties, the artist can't say anything.

I've seen a lot of cases where a politician used a song without paying royalties but nothing happened because the artist happened to agree with that particular politician.

Boring.