Nancy Wilson

Singer/Songwriter and guitarist Nancy Wilson is looking to make a comeback with her 1980’s band Heart as they prepare for the “Red Velvet Car” tour. From a young age, Wilson had always been a huge fan of music, and was open to listening to any kind, from Ray Charles to Judy Garland, to even classical music. It wasn’t until she was nine years old where she knew she wanted to be a singer after watching The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. She became aware of her musical potential when she became sick and missed school for several months, and learned to play the guitar just to occupy time.

When Wilson graduated from high school she was approached by her older sister, Ann, to join her group, “Heart.” Despite declining at first, Wilson eventually changed her mind as she left school to join her sister and band mates in Canada. Even though she was the youngest member, Wilson soon made her presence felt by merging the sounds of both acoustic and hard rock into one, especially after being influenced by Led Zeppelin. Even with all the excitement, the band would at first have to deal with being turned down by every major music label. That all changed in 1976 after being discovered by Mushroom Records, an independent record label based in Canada.

After the release of their debut album, Dreamboat Annie, Heart finally made their presence felt in the music world with the help of the iconic lead track, “Magic Man.” Dreamboat Annie was surprisingly a commercial success as it peaked at number seven on the US albums charts, along with the help of the two other singles “Dreamboat Annie” and “Crazy On You.”
Following the success of their debut album, Heart released their follow up album “Little Queen,” which was hugely successful. The album featured the band’s most popular hit, Barracuda, which peaked at number eleven on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album’s success was also contributed well by the release of other hit singles such as “Kick It Out,” which peaked at seventy-nine, and Little Queen, peaking at sixty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Heart had released other albums throughout the seventies and early eighties such as Dog and Butterfly (1978), Bebe is Strange (1980), and Private Audition (1983).

In 1985, they released their self-titled album, Heart, which to this day is their only album to ever hit number one on the charts. The album was helped due to the success of hit singles such as “These Dreams,” “What About Love,” “Never,” and “Nothin’ At All.” In 1987, they released Bad Animal, which nearly replicated the success of their previous album, peaking at number two on the Billboard charts. Bad Animal became commercial success thanks to hits such as “Alone” and Who Will You Run To.” To complete out the trio of successful albums, the band released Brigade in 1990, which was followed by the hugely successful song “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You.”

Though they did not experience the same success throughout the rest of the nineties, the band never lost their love for music. Their most recent album, Red Velvet Car, was met with commercial success as it peaked at number ten on the Billboard charts and featured the hit singles “WTF” and “Hey You.”

In our exclusive interview with the iconic rocker from Heart, Nancy Wilson talks about topics such as her most outstanding moment in her career, favorite tracks, future projects and much more!