Heart Never Intended for a ‘Women in Rock’ Legacy, Were Surprised To Be “Singled Out”

When we think of powerful women in the rock ‘n’ roll world, there is a list of recurring actors: Janis Joplin, Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks, Grace Slick, and sister duo Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. But if you were to have asked the Wilsons back in the 1970s what they thought about being classified as female-fronted rock, you might’ve taken them by surprise.

As Nancy Wilson explained in a 2024 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Heart never started out to highlight women in music. It just happened. The powerful legacy of it all was something secondary, something they had to grow into.

Heart Was Surprised To Be “Singled Out” As Women in Rock

Heart not classifying themselves as ‘women in rock’ sounds almost as absurd as Dolly Parton choosing not to classify herself as a ‘woman in country.’ But of course, maybe it’s the sheer ensemble of it all that kept the former from considering their role in the legacy of women in a male-dominated industry.

“When we started out, [it] was not a gender-specific story,” Nancy Wilson explained in the Ultimate Classic Rock podcast. “The interesting thing about how Heart started was that we were in democracies with guys in bands. We were never female-specific about anything. We just were one of the guys, in many ways, just slogging away side by side with some great players.”

Still, being the only set of siblings in the band certainly had its commercial advantages. The fact that Ann and Nancy Wilson were sisters and the only women in the band only supported the notion that they should be the primary singer-songwriters. After the band set that dynamic, Heart took off with the Wilsons at the helm.

“We weren’t feminists,” Wilson insisted. “We were just strong military brats with a really big work ethic that wanted to be like the Beatles. By the time we came out in the mid-70s, everything was possible in music. There was Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, and then here comes Fleetwood Mac. Heart was just a natural progression in the family of music at the time.”

Surprised Or Not, It’s The Cross The Wilsons Now Bear

Whether or not Heart set out to be an inspiration for women in rock specifically, it’s certainly a legacy they adopted over their many decades of success. From their 1970s hits like “Magic Man” and “Barracuda” to their 1980s power pop tracks like “Alone” and “What About Love,” Ann and Nancy Wilson were leading the charge at the mic and on guitar, respectively.

Years after they first burst onto the scene, the music industry looks different. “It’s not so wildly crazy to see women out there doing it [anymore],” Nancy told Ultimate Classic Rock. “You’ve got boygenius now…Courtney Barnett…the Last Dinner Party opening up for the [Rolling] Stones and stuff like that. It’s not such a rarified, unusual thing anymore for women to step forward and be counted as rockers and a force in music.”

Heart’s approach to their craft certainly contributed to this shift. “We were pretty dogged going into the job,” the Heart guitarist told AXS TV. “Being, you know, Marine Corps brats didn’t hurt, either. We were brave and ready to be the Beatles and not try to marry the Beatles. We were not shy about it.”

Photo by Steve Rapport/Getty Images