Heart

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 Presents a Lovemongers' Christmas is a Christmas album and the twelfth studio album by Heart. The album was originally released in October 1998 with the title Here Is Christmas, as the second album of the Lovemongers, a side project involving Ann and Nancy Wilson, their longtime friend and collaborator Sue Ennis and Frank Cox…

After acquiring a substantial following with Dreamboat Annie, Heart solidified its niche in the hard rock and arena rock worlds with the equally impressive Little Queen. Once again, loud-and-proud, Led Zeppelin-influenced hard rock was the thing that brought Heart the most attention…

On The Road Home, Heart re-records some of their biggest hits acoustically live in concert. It's interesting to hear these arena rock and AOR standards – including "Barracuda," "Crazy on You," "Dreamboat Annie," and "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You" – recast as intimate numbers…

Essential Heart is the only compilation that covers the group's tenure at both Epic and Capitol. All the hits of the '70s are featured on the first disc and include "Crazy on You", "Magic Man", "Barracuda" and "Straight On." The second disc includes all of their comeback material recorded in the '80s such as "What About Love?", "These Dreams", and "Nothin' at All". [Epic/Capitol/Legacy's Limited Edition 3.0 appeared in 2008 and included a bonus CD – in addition to the original, two-CD set.]

True, Heart were trying to progress following the hard-rocking Bebe Le Strange so it could be said that Private Audition and its followup Passionworks were a transition stage. That said, it's actually not a bad album. The writing is good, but not at the heights of Dreamboat Annie or Dog & Butterfly…

Switching from Epic to Capitol with 1985's Heart proved to be a wise move for the Wilson sisters, who experienced a major resurgence in popularity and gained many new followers. Heart's arena rock sound had become even glossier, and the band was selling more albums than ever…

2012 has been quite a year for Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson. In June, the multi-disc box set retrospective Strange Euphoria was released. It was followed in September by the publication of their memoir, Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock and Roll. And in October comes Fanatic, a brand new studio offering…