Disco de Heart: “The Essential Heart”

When I review a `greatest', `best of', or in this case, `essential', CD I try to consider two aspects of the CD. The first aspect is whether the CD is good in and of itself, and the other is what the CD brings to the collected works of the artist or artists.

This collection is more comprehensive than Heart's previous greatest hits collection. Thus this collection adds another CD of material, much of which is good and worthy of having. Of course, you can hardly go wrong with any Heart music, hard rockers that have been around since the mid-70s. Many of their songs are now standards on classic rock stations and rate as some of the best songs in rock. While nearly anyone reading this review should know those classics, some of the better known are `Barracuda' (that riff is absolutely classic), `Magic Man', `Heartless', `What About Love', `Alone', `Never', and if I don't stop now I'll be repeating the entire CD list. All of their biggest hits are on this CD.

The difficulty is whether this CD meets the standard of `essential'. Certainly the `essential' part of the CD is here, but so are a number of songs that might be good, but are hardly essential. However, I've noticed that some business manager somewhere has creatively figured out that if Heart offers greatest hits CDs with few greatest hits, and they offer this one with two CDs worth that truly contain the greatest hits with some other songs to fill out two CDs, the choice will force most people looking for depth to buy this CD. It's unfortunate that the original Heart CD `These Dreams: Heart Greatest Hits', which really had the greatest hits on a single CD, no longer appears to be available.

The music industry has recognized that one way to milk music that has sold a lot of CDs in the past is to keep repackaging the music in various ways to get people to buy the same music over and over. In the case of this CD, the artists are true greats, the music is great, and the CD was truly unnecessary to release, given that there was a previous CD. This CD gets 4 stars because the music is awesome and well done, subtracting 1 star for overly clever business practices that will anger people and wonder whether they should buy any music at all.

"The Essential Heart" is probably the one stop Heart record casual fans will need, which is fine, because as a compliation it does it's job gathering all of their big hits and (nearly) all of their noteworthy album cuts.

Their are noteworthy tunes abound. Disc 1 walks through their 70's work, Stand-outs being the mystical feel of "Magic man", the heavy distortion of Barracuda". And the folky riff of "Crazy on you". The latter being the ideal opener.

If there's one questionable omission, it's from the "Little Queen" album: the acoustic "Cry to me". Which was also released as the B-Side to the "Barracuda" single. It definetely deserves it's place alongside these classics and it's absence made my head itch. So for that I must deduct a star from my rating.

Anyways despite that, "The Essential Heart" is definitely one of the better titles in the series. In hindsight given Sony's botched Ozzy Osbourne, Bob Dylan, Blue Oyster Cult, and Billy Joel compilations, they for once got it right. If you're on a budget looking for Heart's music, "The Essential Heart" is the way to go.

The 70's gave the Wilson Sisters a chance to demonstrate their talents and they surely did. Not only could they write some of the nicest ballads I have ever heard (Dreamboat Annie, Love Alive), but they could belt out some of great rock tunes too. All of which have become rock classics (Magic Man, Crazy on You, Barracuda).

If you have followed Heart the way I have, you will know that there were 2 journeys for this band. The fab 70's where they played the way they wanted to play, and recorded songs they wanted to record. However, record companies in the 80's weren't so accepting or generous and groups had to conform to 'standards'. My first impression of Heart's 1985 album "Heart" was "omigod, they have died". Gone were the great rock and folks songs. Here we had big hairdo's, big power ballads and synthesizer city. But that's what the 80's were about. Heart still received hit after hit (What about Love, Never, Alone) and the 80's albums kept coming. I was disappointed with the change that Heart adopted, by understand it so much better now. Alot of the 80's stuff wasn't their choice. Interesting to note, that none of the 80's hits that Heart sang, were actually written by Heart. This pleased me because I just felt that Anne or Nancy couldn't write such crappy songs (eg. All I Want to Do is Make Love to You).

The Wilson sisters, have said, in one way or another, that they are glad the 80's have passed, and that they can return to what they really do best ie. folk and rock.

What 'Essential' does, is give an impressive look at the career of this great band. Disc 1 is obviously my favourite as it features most of the 70's classics (with some strange omissions) while Disc 2 features those 80's power ballads, and some early 90's stuff which sees them Heart returning to the true Heart.

Who was the idiot though who picked the wrong version of DREAMBOAT ANNIE on it. It should have been the single version which is faster.

...and no, it can never be topped. Why is this?? Because Sony included EVERY SINGLE Billboard chart entry on this collection, and then some more!! Sony also improved on the 1-disc 1998 "Greatest Hits" in at least two ways...

One being the expanding to two CDs (CD1 being the Epic and Mushroom material, 1975 to 1983) and CD2 being the Capitol stuff, 1985 to 1995, much kudos going to Capitol in being great sports in allowing all 19 of these songs to be licensed over to Sony), with all tracks in chronological order, which is cool in following the evolution of the band.

Two being CD1 + CD2 themselves, serious improvements on the individual Epic "Greatest Hits" and Capitol "Greatest Hits 1985-1995", correcting the errors in missing songs, remastering, etc, making this 2CD collection REALLY Essential Heart indeed!! Overall, the whole thing played together nonstop packs a serious wallop, an incredible journey to be taken.

The songs themselves are all classics, and to be honest, the overly slick, somewhat corporate 80s material holds up better than one would imagine. Heart gets VERY close to the line of formula and banality here, but never crosses it, thus retaining the soul of what makes Heart HEART (the soulful, powerful voice of Ann + guitar grace of Nancy, their way with a good song, killer riffs, etc). They seem to make these Diane Warren songs, and LA songwriter tunes THEIRS. I mean, it's hard to imagine anyone other than Heart do "These Dreams" so beautifully, correct??

Now, to sum it all up, Heart is like a female Led Zeppelin, and this comes through, espesh in the early, rawer, more homespun material, like "Crazy On You", "Magic Man", "Barricuda", and even the orchestral "Dreamboat Annie". The 1st disc is a cool summation of their Epic and Mushroom years. The 2nd disc is the 80s-90s Capitol stuff, from their self-titled 1985 comeback album that landed FOUR top 10's in a row, up through their 1994 largely acoustic live album, "The Road Home", produced by none other than Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones!! What comes around, goes around, it seems!!

Lastly, besides their wonderfully written material, Heart also has a winning way with a cover tune, evident on "Alive In Seattle"'s numerous covers of Elton John and Led Zeppelin. Here on "The Essential Heart", here are the covers included, just to cover up some confusion. I just wish with some of the more obscure ones, they were more VOCAL about which songs are actually covers and whom they were originally by...here goes:

CD1--

CD2-- (here's where people may not be so aware of...)

Sure, I found, maybe 3 errors in the booklet, but they are minor, so I just corrected them myself with a copy machine, very simple...

Heart are classic and still going...most excellent, the new songs are GREAT!!!!

The compilation album "Essential Heart" is a great cd for fans of the group Heart, featuring Ann and Nancy Wilson. It covers a wide variety of Heart songs from albums released during their first 20 years together. The cd includes the big hits from Heart's first successes during the years of 1975 to 1982 and also from their amazing comeback years of 1983 to 1990. While the cd contains all of the major chart hits, it also includes the not so well known songs that the true fans love. With 37 Heart songs included on the album, it is a great source of the group's musical work.