Heart Album: “Greatest Hits”

This CD only features Heart's early music, which is great of course, but it totally neglects Heart's success in the 80's and 90's. A MUCH BETTER greatest hits CD is "Heart - These Dreams/Heart's Greatest Hits", which for SOME reason Amazon does not sell. That CD is the consummate Heart collection, with their early hits AS WELL as their later music, all on one CD.

A few months ago, I wrote an album review for Heart's

Definitive Collection. Well, I purchased this album

and Definitive Collection, because each album contained

tracks the other album didn't have.

Strong, Strong, Wind, Magic Man, Crazy on You,

Dreamboat Annie, Heartless, Bebe Le Strange, Rock

and Roll [Live] are the tracks that available on this

album, but not available on Definitive Collection.

Definitive Collection contains the following tracks

that aren't available on Greatest Hits: Dream of The

Archer, Cry To Me, Lighter Touch, Nada One, Sweet

Darlin, Perfect Stranger, Allies and Johnny Moon.

In my opinion, what Sony should have done is

taken the tracks exclusive to both collections

and include the common tracks, and release it

as a 2 disc set instead of two separate albums.

This is much better than buying two seperate Heart

compilation albums, which contain common tracks.

The album starts off with a power ballad,

Strong, Strong, Wind, followed by the somewhat

mystical Magic Man. The guitar wails on this track,

and sounds a bit rock and a bit on the blues side.

Crazy on You is just pure hard rock, perhaps even

with a heavy metal edge to it that just rocks the

house down. Dreamboat Annie slows it down a bit,

and isn't so high energy as Crazy on You, but then

again, it's hard to replicate that effort on every

track. I feel we get to the meat of the album from

tracks 6-15. I feel this is Heart at their best.

Dreamboat Annie and other tracks from

their debut album that was missing from Definitive

Collection are made available here.

I feel Rock and Roll [Live] is best left to

Robert Plant and his band, Led Zeppelin, although

the Heart version is passable. Ann Wilson does a

much better job on Aaron Neville's Tell It Like It

Is in my honest opinion. All in all, this is a

pretty solid album, but I would rate Definitive

Collection higher. Perhaps Sony would take the

hint and release 2 CD box set of 25 songs that

contains everything on Greatest Hits and

Definitive Collection, since there is quite a bit

of overlap here.

I prefer the 70s-early 80s Heart when they were really in their prime---not the overblown later version when they were fed empty songs. Along with the old faves, I also enjoy the lovely new ballad "Strong, Strong Wind", a perfect song for any ideal soundtrack album. VERY beautiful.

Anyone with an astute grasp of the obvious will tell you that Heart was the first major hard rock band to be led by women. Their success helped open the door for future female artists who held up Ann and Nancy Wilson as influential role models.

This single CD anthology explains why. The tracks are culled from the early stages of their careers when Heart was at its creative zenith and their playing and songwriting skills were unincumbered by corporate influences and MTV meddling.

Songs such as "Crazy on You," "Magic Man," "Kick it Out, "Little Queen," and "Dog & Butterfly," show off the band's ability to rock as hard as their '70s contemporaries, while writing thoughtful, introspective songs at the same time. Note how different each of the above songs are from one another: the bass-heavy, synthesizer-centric "Magic Man;" the unkempt garbage band feel of "Kick it Out;" the coy, feminine pout of "Little Queen," and the gorgeous acoustic lilt of "Dog and Butterfly."

All that went out the window by the mid-80s as pressure to resurrect their careers resulted in a series of albums featuring depressingly-dull power ballads that were MTV-friendly but contained little substance and certainly zero imagination. The girls even abandoned their 70s scruples (we won't allow us to be sex objects in order to sell our music, was the battle cry) for these videos, donning tons of leather while incorporating dry ice, big fluffy hairdos, scads of make-up along with sultry looks and tight-fitting outfits from Nancy.

The strategy worked. The new Heart eye candy sold mountains of CDs while fans of their earlier work were left scratching their heads, feeling a bit like a jilted lover.

Well, it's time to forgive and forget, because with the single act of purchasing this CD you will have most all of the essential songs from the band's most fruitful period.

As if to remind you how precious these songs are, the CD opens with a tune recorded especially for this "Greatest Hits" package -- a Diane Warren-penned ballad called "Strong, Strong Wind." This cloying piece of crappola is not too far removed from the band's mid-80s sell-out period and I was kind of shocked when I put the CD in and pushed play and this tripe spewed forth. I've tried to get through it several times, but my efforts have been in vain. Please, ladies, write and produce your own tunes in the future and remember what put you on the map to begin with.

Oldtime Heart fans, this is a great compilation if you're not in the mood to track down all of Heart's '70s and early-'80 stuff and I highly recommended it. But do yourself a favor and start the CD on Track #2 ("Magic Man") and forgive them this one indiscression.

I agree with Steven Stolder about the new song -- written by a non-member of the band and sporting their '80's synth-pop sound - which I don't care for. Ever since guitarist/songwriter Roger Fisher left Heart, they've reverted from a phenomenal ensemble, which wrote all its own wonderful material, to, basically, a singer with anonymous sounding backing musicians - often including the dreaded synths - and songs by Brill Building type hacks. Yes they made money doing this in the 80's but I don't have to like it! But there are some great tunes on this CD -- from the first 3 albums. There is one live performance missing though, and maybe the only non-Heart-written tune they've done that I really like: a Hot version of Unchained Melody - which was on the Greatest Hits LP but inexplicably omitted from the CD version. I hope that performance makes it to CD someday, but my biggest hope for Heart is the reconstitution of the original lineup - especially including the wonderful Roger Fisher.