Customer Reviews

Heart - Greatest Hits

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a much improved greatest hits package of Heart over the 1980 Greatest/Live. Instead of stopping with the 1980 cover of Aaron Neville: Tell It Like It Is, it covers the early eighties albums Private Audition and Passionworks.

This boasts superb sound, excellent sequencing (chronologically), and fine liner notes.

However, one curious choice seems to go unnoticied by a number of reviewers...Dreamboat Annie is NOT the familiar version. Instead of choosing the two minute title track, which is the popular version and which launched their career, they opt for the reprise!

Not too bad a version, slower, heavier, but an odd choice. Had they chose the title track, there may have been room for another cut (Mistral Wind or Allies, perhaps).

True, at the time the title song to their first lp was on the Capitol These Dreams best-of, so that meant less overlapping, but this has now been deleted. The replacment will be due in late May and will drop all of the seventies tracks (it will be Greatest Hits 1985-1995).

Maybe Epic will fix this error and put the original version of Dreamboat Annie on this.

Still, it's great to have fine cuts from Little Queen like Kick It Out, and Love Alive that were not on the previous best-of.

A terrific greatest hits of the prime era of Heart.

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.

I have all their albums but still decided to buy "The Greatest Hits", I just couldn't resist. Ann Wilson has been a major influence to me. I remember reading my sister's rock mags and seeing her voted top female rock artist in all of them for several years, mags such as Creem, RIP etc. I've always credited the Wilson sisters as being the first "true" female "rockers" in music. Pioneers paving the way for groups like "The Runaways" and "Hole." Ann's voice is to this day the best and she definitely could have given Robert Plant a run for his money during the 70's. Nancy just showed all the guys that it wasn't a boys club anymore.

I love their songs, especially the early ones, and will forever love the vocals. Wow, what power, expression and range...my boyfriend even learned 3 of their songs on guitar due to my "Heart" obsession. Sure, they're alot of cool bands around, Creed, Live, Fuel etc., but "Heart" always touches my soul.

I love this compilation of songs...what more can I say...they're incredibly talented woman.

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.

This is a decent enough attempt at a "Greatest Hits" package but, like all such efforts, it doesn't represent the artist completely.

"Crazy On You" and "Barracuda" are great Rock singles and there are a half dozen other classic rock-radio tunes here. But the exclusion of some of Heart's quirkier stuff, including the live version of the epic "Mistral Wind," make them seem too much like a female version of Journey. It was the mysterious, fantasy-land stuff that set Heart apart from a lot of the 70s/80s hair bands who really couldn't carry their guitar cases. "Bebe Le Strange" only hints at what I'm talking about.

I'm also dissapointed to find the slower, duller version of "Dreamboat Annie" included on this disc...and who really wanted to hear Heart's version of "Rock and Roll," which should never have gotten further than sound check?

By the way, for the few critics who have taken the opportunity to ridicule "Barracuda" as something less than worthy of airplay...if you were a 16-year old guy when the record was released in 1977, you would understand. Ann Wilson was an awakening.

Though this is good, as is the later hits collection, there is a MUCH better one out there. It's Greatest Hits 1997 which I believe is out of print but can't imagine why because it is far superior to the other two packages and even the new "Essential" collection thats out. You may have to find it used, but Hits 97 is 17 tracks from their entire career with not one weak song. I found it very worth looking for.

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.

Fabulous. Simply put, this cd makes me happy, it has great beats, great lyrics, magic man might be the best song ever, and I've completely fallen in love with it. I think anyone who wants a good array of music should add this to their collection. You can't go wrong with it, and you won't be sorry. I am a new Heart fan myself and was wary about whether I should buy this cd or not, I'm not sorry and you won't be either.

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.