Ann Wilson

Vocalist Ann Wilson formed one half of the sibling pairing behind the enduring arena rock band Heart, delivering lead vocals on multiple landmark rock radio successes from the 1970s and 1980s such as "Barracuda," "Crazy on You," "What About Love?," and "Alone." Beyond her primary role in Heart, she has worked alongside artists including Alice in Chains, Cheap Trick, and Loverboy, showcasing a dramatic soprano that balances power with adaptability, and in 2007 she issued her debut solo album Hope & Glory, a collection consisting largely of covers that brought together notable contributors such as Elton John, Alison Krauss, and Rufus Wainwright. A follow-up covers album, Immortal, appeared in 2018. Her 2021 EP Sawheat 8 contained two covers mixed with three original compositions, whereas the 2022 full-length Fierce Bliss incorporated guest contributions from Vince Gill and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Ann Wilson entered the world on June 19, 1950, with her family relocating frequently throughout her childhood because her father served as a Marine Corps captain, until they established residence in Seattle, Washington. As a reserved adolescent coping with a stutter, Wilson found an expressive channel through music and singing. By the close of the 1960s she had developed equal appreciation for hard rock acts like Led Zeppelin and folk performers such as Joni Mitchell, allowing her vocal approach to shift fluidly between those influences. The early 1970s brought her entry into a Seattle rock group called Heart (originally White Heart), after which she made an initial attempt to persuade her younger sister, guitarist Nancy Wilson, to participate. Heart proceeded without her at first, during which period Ann began a romantic involvement with the band's guitarist Mike Fisher. Prior to commencing work on a debut album, Fisher stepped away from his guitar duties to serve as sound engineer, prompting another invitation to Nancy that she ultimately accepted.

Heart's first album, 1976's Dreamboat Annie, gradually achieved strong sales following its re-release on Capitol Records, with Ann's expansive vocals helping establish lasting classic rock standards including "Magic Man," "Crazy on You," and the title track. Additional successful albums (1977's Little Queen and 1978's Dog & Butterfly) and singles ("Barracuda") arrived soon afterward, positioning Heart among the leading rock acts across the United States. Yet several prominent rock bands from the prior decade encountered challenges adjusting to evolving musical tastes in the early 1980s, a difficulty that also affected Heart. That era proved personally unsettled for Ann as well, owing to the difficult conclusion of her relationship with Fisher.

Although Heart's early-1980s releases failed to match the commercial heights of their initial work, Wilson achieved a hit through her duet power ballad "Almost Paradise" with Loverboy's Mike Reno, featured on the 1984 blockbuster motion picture soundtrack Footloose. Heart soon changed record labels and revised both sound and image to align with emerging MTV-era performers. The strategy succeeded, yielding several major hits from the 1985 self-titled comeback album such as "What About Love," "These Dreams," "Never," and "Nothin' at All." Heart maintained a comparable style across subsequent albums through the rest of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, a span that also included another duet success for Ann alongside Cheap Trick's Robin Zander on "Surrender to Me" from the 1988 soundtrack Tequila Sunrise.

During the 1990s Ann and Nancy established their own Seattle recording facility, Bad Animals, coinciding with the rise of numerous successful grunge bands in the region, among them Alice in Chains, with whom Ann contributed vocals to their 1991 acoustic EP Sap. Ann and Nancy soon formed the back-to-basics side project the Lovemongers, which debuted via a cover of Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore" on the 1992 Singles film soundtrack. In 1993 the Lovemongers released a four-song EP bearing the same Zeppelin title, though a full debut album, Whirlygig, did not arrive until 1997. Amid sporadic Heart and Lovemongers activity through the 1990s and early 2000s, Ann focused primarily on raising her children, while still participating in collaborative performances such as The British Rock Symphony alongside Roger Daltrey and Paul Rodgers, as well as the Beatles tribute tour A Walk Down Abbey Road that also featured Todd Rundgren, John Entwistle, and Alan Parsons.

In 2007 the singer delivered her first solo album, the guest-filled covers collection Hope & Glory, which included three appearances by Nancy. An EP titled The Ann Wilson Thing! #1 came out on Rounder in 2015, followed by The Ann Wilson Thing! #2 in 2016. The 2018 full-length covers release Immortal presented Wilson's interpretations of songs originally associated with David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Tom Petty, and Chris Cornell. She later interpreted material by Steve Earle and Alice in Chains on the 2021 Sawheat 8 EP, which also contained three original songs. Early 2022 brought the original single "Greed," preceding the April arrival of the full-length Fierce Bliss, which featured guest spots from Vince Gill, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and Warren Haynes along with cover artwork by longtime rock illustrator Roger Dean.