The 72-year-old San Diego-born singer and Heart frontwoman, Ann Wilson, is making music and kicking butt. In fact, her sister Nancy, also of Heart, just talked about the two writing new songs together, to which we say “Ya-hooo!”
Videos by American Songwriter
For decades, Ann has been singing some of the most powerful rock songs in the genre, from “Crazy On You” to “Barracuda.” But with all this vocal power, one might wonder what Ann has to say about the world around her. About her career, love, life, and her craft?
Without further ado, here are the 20 best Ann Wilson quotes.
1. “I would be on dates with guys, and the radio would be on, and if the Moody Blues song came on I couldn’t concentrate on the guy; I would go straight into the music.”
2. “What’s important to me is love, especially that. What’s important to me is growing and evolving. But ultimately, what’s important to me is being real and being authentic. I’ve spent enough time in my life holding poses, playing roles.”
3. “People talk about each other in the worst way, especially when you become a product for sale. You’re just a thing.”
4. “It’s a really bad idea to be in a band and get involved with each other.”
5. “When you become famous, people can have a powerful yet illusory idea of who you are. You want to live your life, but still, you don’t want to let anyone down. I know Ed Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Jerry Cantrell, all those guys felt it. They’re smart, real, and all of a sudden, they’re put on a pedestal.”
6. “Fame put a lot of pressure on me in the Eighties and early Nineties—and I’m glad that I had the kind of makeup where I could come through it alive, keep myself in hand.”
7. “Heart’s always been sort of like a cockroach. You can set off a bomb, and it’ll still be alive underneath.”
8. “Back when I started, you could either be a folk singer, or you could be a disco diva, or you could be a secretary or maybe a disc jockey, but there was no room for anything alternative yet.”
9. “Music became less understandable in the wake of the new MTV era. You weren’t supposed to be anything other than a pop star, to not go deeper than that. It was really strange. It was suffocating, image-wise. What you could talk about in a song changed; if you were misunderstood, you were really misunderstood—taken literally.”
10. “Bands are always told, ‘Nobody wants to hear your new stuff—just stick with the meat and potatoes—that’s what people come for.’ That’s only half-true. I know if I went to see U2, I would be thrilled if they did ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ but I’m equally as thrilled to hear their new stuff.”
11. “At that time a lot of young men didn’t want to go to the war and kill. This guy that I fell in love with was one of those so he escaped to Canada and I followed him.”
12. “Back when we were first making records, you didn’t just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing.”
13. “You have to also provide a video for it, look a certain way, and have big hair… If you’re a woman it’s even more strange with fake fingernails and corsets and all this stuff that was big in the 80s.”
14. “Some time ago, I learned how to say, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen up there?’ I could mess up some words, I could sing flat… I could appear human. Is that really the worst thing in the world?”
15. “I trained myself by doing other people’s songs in clubs way back when. And so I have no pride about doing covers. I love it. And being a song interpreter, to me, is just as important as, you know, putting your own thing out there. It’s all about the soul—where the soul comes from.”
16. “There’s love relationships, there’s sex relationships and then there’s the band.”
17. “Just being out in the world, you see so many things, and every day, you experience so many concepts and different people and their coolness and weirdness. It’s a feast of ideas.”
18. “Rock evolved out of rebellion, so when you turn on the Billboard Awards or something like the Grammys, and there’s no rock on there, that’s a good sign—because that means that rock is not welcome inside of a pop format.”
19. “We had a mother who could have been called a feminist. That’s just how we were raised. Why do you have to go sulk off in some corner because you are a girl? What’s the big deal?’
20. “It’s one thing to look at someone like Beyonce and Rihanna and to see how beloved and talented they are, and it’s another thing to live inside it.”
Photo by Michael Tran/FilmMagic
