The Super Seventies "Classic 500"

Dreamboat Annie
Heart
Mushroom 5005
Released: March 1976
Chart Peak: #7
Weeks Charted: 100
Certified Platinum: 11/5/76

Nancy Wilson The left-field commercial success of the year, Heart is a six-member Vancouver-based band built around the dual talents of lead singer and lyricist Ann Wilson and her sister Nancy (melodist and acoustic guitarist). Though crudely produced, the album has an intensity seldom found on more polished records.

Original album advertising art.
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Most of the songs carry confused, too-elaborate arrangements but these technical inadequacies matter less when coupled with a voice as strong, flexible and emotionally captivating as Ann Wilson's. Her phrasing is as confident as Helen Reddy's, her timbre seductive as Christine McVie's, and her scalding hard-rock attack not unlike Robert Plant's; it is her performance which holds together the album's sharply defined,if not coherently developed, themes of supernatural love and sexual hysteria. The music runs from guitar-and-synthesizer-oriented rock with blues-based vocal and guitar hooks ("Magic Man" and "Crazy on You") to dreamy art-rock ("Soul of the Sea"). But the strongest piece is the haunting title theme, an acoustic folk fragment that is developed recurrently throughout the album. The success of Heart, in the wake of Fleetwood Mac, should point the way to still more acceptance of women rock singers in a field still very dominated by men.

- Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone, 10-21-76.

Bonus Reviews!

Their striking first album was one of the top-selling debuts ever. * * * *

- Dan Heilman, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

For the complex, synthesizer-drenced classic rock mysticism of "Magic Man" to the straight-up rock of "Crazy on You" and the dreamy title track, Dreamboat Annie expertly melds a singer-songwriter's imagination with a rocker's muscle -- adding three classic cuts to the 70s rock lexicon in the process. * * * * 1/2

- Eric Deggans, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

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