Heart

Heart was pretty much considered washed up when they released Heart in 1985. They learned a few important things while they had taken a short sabbatical – they knew that hooks were important and they knew they could play up their looks for MTV. So, they delivered both with Heart, giving their audience anthemic hooks and tightly corseted bosoms, leading to the most popular album they ever had. This doesn't mean it's the best, since its calculated mainstream bent may disarm some long-term fans, but it is true that they do this better than many of their peers, not just because they have good polished material from professional songwriters but because they can deliver this material professionally themselves. Yes, "These Dreams," "Never," and "What About Love" don't quite fit into the classic Heart mode, but they are good mid-'80s mainstream material, delivered as flawlessly as possible. There's still a lot of filler on this record, but the best moments are among the best mainstream AOR of its era.

2014 four CD release, an installment in the popular The Box Set Series, which come packed with original hit recordings by the biggest artists in music history. This set from the Classic Rock duo features 44 tracks including 'Barracuda', 'Straight On', 'Even It Up' and the previously unreleased 'Stairway to Heaven'.
Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson are the creative spark behind Heart, a rock group who initially found success in the mid-'70s via guitar-heavy radio hits like "Magic Man" and "Barracuda," only to reach greater heights after engineering a major pop comeback a decade later. Drawing from progressive rock, hard rock, and folk, the band's 1976 debut, Dreamboat Annie, and 1977 sophomore effort, Little Queen, helped establish Heart as a hard-hitting hitmaking machine with both hooks and attitude…

Heart was pretty much considered washed up when they released Heart in 1985. They learned a few important things while they had taken a short sabbatical – they knew that hooks were important and they knew they could play up their looks for MTV. So, they delivered both with Heart, giving their audience anthemic hooks and tightly corseted bosoms, leading to the most popular album they ever had. This doesn't mean it's the best, since its calculated mainstream bent may disarm some long-term fans, but it is true that they do this better than many of their peers, not just because they have good polished material from professional songwriters but because they can deliver this material professionally themselves.

Spanning 1975-1995, These Dreams: Heart's Greatest Hits isn't an ideal collection of Heart's best known songs, but it does a darn nice job trying to be. While this 1997 release boasts 17 of Heart's best known songs, it doesn't always contain the best known versions of those songs – because of licensing restrictions, Capitol didn't have access to all of Heart's material…

Rock group that was started in Seattle, in 1967, as "The Army" by bassist Steve Fossen, along with Roger Fisher on guitar, Don Wilhelm on guitar, keyboards and lead vocals, and Ray Schaefer on drums…

Heart had a second run on the charts in 1985 when they signed to Capitol Records and refashioned themselves as a mainstream pop/rock band, heavy on melodies and power ballads. The move paid off immediately, as they scored four Top Ten hits from Heart, their first record for the label: "What About Love?," "Never," "These Dreams," and "Nothin' at All." Heart kept up their hot streak for several more years, reaching the Top Ten three other times with the number one hit "Alone," "Who Will You Run To," and "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You." All of those songs are on Greatest Hits 1985-1995, along with 11 other tracks, including the semi-rarities of the Ann Wilson and Robin Zander duet "Surrender to Me" and the "studio version" of "You're the Voice." It may run a little long for the more casual fans, but overall, this is an excellent overview of the era, perfect for fans that don't need the full-length studio albums.

In the 1980s and '90s, numerous women recorded blistering rock, but things were quite different in 1976 – when female singers tended to be pigeonholed as soft rockers and singer/songwriters and were encouraged to take after Carly Simon, Melissa Manchester, or Joni Mitchell rather than Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. Greatly influenced by Zep, Heart did its part to help open doors for ladies of loudness with the excellent Dreamboat Annie. Aggressive yet melodic rockers like "Sing Child," "White Lightning & Wine," and the rock radio staples "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You" led to the tag "the female Led Zeppelin." And in fact, Robert Plant did have a strong influence on Ann Wilson. But those numbers and caressing, folk-ish ballads like "How Deep It Goes" and the title song also make it clear that the Nancy and Ann Wilson had their own identity and vision early on.

Heart had a pair of greatest-hits collections to their credit by 1997, but both did not contain all the renowned studio versions of their classic hits from the '70s (both 1980's Heart Greatest Hits: Live on Epic and 1997's Greatest Hits on Capitol contained half studio and half live material). 1998's Greatest Hits on Epic/Legacy finally corrected this once and for all – collecting all of Heart's '70s studio hits on a single disc. Nearly all of the songs have become classic rock staples, the best-known being the Zep-esque rockers "Crazy on You," "Barracuda," and "Magic Man," while the more subdued acoustic material ("Dreamboat Annie," "Love Alive," "Dog & Butterfly") showcases the immense talents of vocalist Ann Wilson.