Customer Reviews

Wild Heart

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would really give this album 4 1/2 stars...

The Wild Heart was Stevie Nicks' follow up to her platinum selling debut, Bella Donna, and proved that this woman did not need Fleetwood Mac to be successful. Many have said that Bella Donna was Stevie's greatest work, but after listening to this album, I'm not so sure. While Bella Donna was moody and dramatic, The Wild Heart has more rockin' songs and also some of Stevie's best vocals ever. Another point that many have brought up is that Wild Heart is a Bella Donna part 2. I have to disagree with these people. When you listen to the two albums back to back, they are evidently different. On Wild Heart, Stevie began to experiment with synthesizers, which were not in Bella Donna at all. She moved away from the country-ish sound she had on her debut album, to a more pop and rock orientated album.

1. Wild Heart: Stevie's title tracks are known for being epic rockers, and this song is no exception. Stevie even wails a bit at the end, one of my favorite parts of this song. 4/5

2. If Anyone Falls: One of the singles of the album, it made #16 on the pop-charts. It has a nice danceable beat to it, and the harmonies on the chorus are beautiful. 4/5

3. Gate and Garden: This is one of Stevie's songs that has taken a lot of flak over the years because of it's vague lyrics. However, the music and the vocals on this track make it work. 4/5

4. Enchanted: One of my favorite Stevie solo songs. A very nice country/rock feel and the piano is just great. You also get a taste of how powerful Stevie's voice was at this time. 5/5

5. Nightbird: A song written about Stevie's friend Robyn Anderson who had died soon after Stevie had released Bella Donna. This track has some great, dark music to it and I love the line, "I wear boots all summer long." 5/5

6. Standback: The big hit of the album, reaching the #6 spot on the charts. This is definitely one of the highlights of the disc. It surges along on a synthesizer hook and Stevie really rocks this one. 5/5

7. I Will Run To You: The duet with Tom Petty on the album. This is actually a very good song and I prefer it to Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (from Bella Donna). 4/5

8. Nothing Ever Changes: The real rocker on this album. It just has so much energy and Stevie's voice is killer. She sounds so angry and powerful. Also, it has some nice sax and piano work. 5/5

9. Sable on Blonde: This song is just amazing. "To be brave save the stranger...Sable on Blonde." Wow I just love this song, the production is great and the vocals are sublime. 5/5

10. Beauty and the Beast: One of the most moving and beautiful songs Stevie has ever written. Stevie recorded this live with an orchestra, and the result is a haunting, dark ballad. Stevie's voice really shines on this one. And it just might be my favorite on the album. 5/5

There you have it. All in all, I still can't decide which is better, Wild Heart or Bella Donna. Check them out and see for yourself.

Coming off the massive success of Bella Donna, which easily overshadowed Mirage, Fleetwood Mac's well-crafted but tepid 1982 release, Nicks side-stepped the sophomore slump by topping herself with The Wild Heart. Although "Stand Back" was a smash that has become her most popular song, The Wild Heart is not obviously as commercial as Bella Donna. The Wild Heart is more of an artist's album, and Nicks' spreads her wings to command and fill the entire effort with admirable authority.

For a Nicks' fan, The Wild Heart is nirvana: longer songs with more passionate, imagistic lyrics than ever. The title track and the album closer are epics - each over six minutes long - that work the opposite ends of Nicks' spectrum. "Wild Heart" is a thunderous, passionate anthem with her most thrilling vocal work ever, and "Beauty and the Beast" is symphonic gothica for which the term `ballad' is just inadequate. In between, Nicks indulges her mixture of rock and fairydust with alluring results. "Enchanted" and "Nightbird" are pure Nicks and would never have seen the light of day in the more structured programme of Fleetwood Mac.

The Wild Heart also finds Nicks updating her sound into the 80s with striking ease, especially when you consider how most 70s acts that tried to do this either completely sold out or made fools of themselves. She stretches herself well beyond the Fleetwood Mac sound (the torrid "Nothing Ever Changes") and kicks out a trendy hit (the synth-pop confection "If Anyone Falls"). Tellingly, the one weak spot is the out of place Tom Petty duet ("I Will Run to You"). Another Nicks cut, such as "Sleeping Angel" or "Blue Lamp" (both of which ended up buried on soundtrack albums) would worked much better.

If you are a hard core Stevie Nicks fan, The Wild Heart is superior to Bella Donna. For the casual listener, it would be a toss up between two classic albums. However, Nicks' vocal performances, expansive writing, and the way she sells these songs makes The Wild Heart the more personal, adventurous, and therefore better effort. Maintaining careers in Fleetwood Mac and on her own, however, was bound to keep her from burning white hot for long. Her next solo album, Rock a Little, would show the strain.

On her first solo album, Bella Donna, Stevie Nicks showed that she could carry the show by herself. On The Wild Heart, she continues her winning ways with an album full of her trademark romantic mysticism. Bella Donna had an underlying country feel, but on The Wild Heart she employs a heavy synthesizer sound. In fact the big hit from the album, "Stand Back", was inspired by Prince. The song has a rolling synth sound and one of the strongest vocals of her career. She does another duet with Tom Petty on "I Will Run To You". The song isn't as good as their first effort, "Stop Dragging My Heart Around", but that song is an all time classic. "If Anyone Falls" is a brilliant track and the best song from the album. There are the requisite mystical work including "Nightbird", "Sable On Blond", "Gate & Garden" and the heavily orchestrated "Beauty & The Beast". The Wild Heart shows that Bella Donna was no fluke.

Stevie Nicks is a legend, and her second solo album from 1983, "The wild heart" is brilliant. A huge hit when it was released, this album spent 11 weeks in Billboard's top ten, peaking at #5, and was the number one selling female album of the year according to Billboard's 1983 chart reviews."Stand Back" was the lead single, and spent weeks in the top ten singles chart and MTV's top ten video charts. It propelled Nicks with a dancy modern sound at the time and the song even made the top 15 on the dance charts. The second single, "If anyone falls" was also a huge hit, peaking at #14, and #4 on the MTV video charts, and features sensuous vocals by Nicks, infectuous guitar licks and a dynamic keyboard sound."Nightbird" was the 3rd single and made the top 30 singles charts, but didn't feature a video, which might be why the song didn't make the top 20, as it's an amazing song, with guest vocals by Sandy Stuart. "Enchanted" also got massive play on album oriented rock radio, and also made the top 20 on Billboard's album rock cuts chart(AOR).Besides the hits, the rest of the album contains no filler and is a solid rock and roll effort. "Gate and garden" is gorgeous with an addictive repeating chorus, and I love the piano on it. Nicks sounds so focused here."I will run to you" is a nice mellow duet with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and "Nothing ever changes" is a frenzied mid tempo rocker with a killer saxaphone solo. "Sable on blonde" features guest Mick Fleetwood on drums, and is a gorgeous honey dripped vocal arrangement, with Nicks slowly building up to a truly impressive wail ending the song. Truly classic. And the set closer, "Beauty and the beast" featuring a full orchestra was recorded in one take, and is chilling, with it's fabled lyrics and Stevie's trademark vibrato commanding this classic ballad. This is a classic rock and roll album, by rock's legendary queen. Spectacular.

Stevie Nicks, of course, first gained international fame along side Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie as one of the front singers of Fleetwood Mac, and her unusual voice and strange lyrics were potent factors in the band's incredibly successful album RUMORS. But for all its success, the members of the band found (and continue to find) Fleetwood Mac an emotional pressure cooker--and perhaps more to the point, with three vocalists there were only so many solo spots to go around on a single release.

It was inevitable that Nicks, Buckingham, and McVie would write more music than Fleetwood Mac could ever find a recording slots for. And so all three begin to spin out from the band, each producing their own solo albums. Of the three, Stevie Nicks had the most visible success as a solo act, first with the platinum-selling BELLA DONNA and then with the equally memorable THE WILD HEART. Fans argue a great deal about which album is their favorite, and critics bicker about which album is Nick's best--but the truth is that both are extremely fine.

Whereas BELLA DONNA had a somewhat country-music flavor, THE WILD HEART leans heavily on synthesizer and serious percussion, and it would generate at least three hit singles. Both "If Any One Falls" and "Stand Back" offer driving rhythms and some stunning keyboards, and with the latter Nicks recasts the almost savage fury that made BELLA DONNA's "Edge of Seventeen" so memorable; "Nightbird" presents Nicks in a slower, more melancholy, more thoughtful, and very memorable light.

Still, the song for which this album is perhaps best remembered is one that was never really released as a single. Working with a near-symphonic arrangement with heavy strings, "Beauty and the Beast" is a truly stunning piece, with Nicks at her most romantic and vulnerable and yet her most emotionally powerful. Nicks' voice, which might be described as an iron fist inside a velvet glove, has always had a tendency to become just a shade too eccentric for its own good, but she controls it well throughout all these recordings--and most particularly here, in an incredibly complex array of delicately placed wails, cries, and surges. The vocal dynamics of this song alone are truly nothing short of miraculous.

Lyrically, this recording also finds Nicks at or at least very near the height of her powers. A sort of rock and roll Rimbaud, Nicks' lyrics do not always make logical sense--but at her best, as on this album, they always make emotional sense, and both "Gate and Garden" and "Sable on Blonde" are particularly good examples of her often uncanny knack to fuse strange images to memorable effect.

Although she continued to do memorable work with the on-again, off-again Fleetwood Mac, Nick's solo work entered a gradual decline of quality after THE WILD HEART until she suddenly resurged with yet another exceptional release: TROUBLE IN SHANGRI-LA. Where she goes from that point is any one's guess. But one thing is for sure: during Fleetwood Mac's SAY YOU WILL tour, Nicks was still performing "Stand Back"--and still doing it with the same vocal attack that made her recordings on THE WILD HEART so memorable--and still bringing the audience screaming to its feet. An exceptional recording by a truly unique recording artist.

--GFT (Amazon.com Reviewer)--

Just waiting for the record company to re-issue the first three albums of Stevie's albums and digitally remaster them, so come on EMI please do this and soon!

THE WILD HEART was Stevie's 1983 follow up to the hugely successful BELLA DONNA album from 1981. This album is very similar to that one, so if you liked her first album there's a great chance you will enjoy THE WILD HEART. Once again Stevie pairs up with Tom Petty on a duet here, titled "I Will Run To You", definately a highlight of the album, a song about friendship. "If Anyone Falls" is a great song about a breakup, it was a good choice for a single from the album. "Stand Back" is one of my favorites, and it was also one of Stevie's biggest hits too, certainly the biggest hit from this album. "Sable on Blond" is a good song, featuing Mic Fleetwood on drums. "Nightbird" is a beautiful song, I heard this is a personal song Stevie wrote about one of her childhood friends who passed away. "Nothing Ever Changes" is an uptempo rocker, another good breakup song. My favorite song is the closing "Beauty & The Beast", an epic ballad of sorts, I heard it is loosely based on a play by the same name. Other highlights include "Gate & Garden", "Enchanted" and more. Overall a strong album, no Nicks fan will want to be without.

The title track is a hint of a shift in music. Reduced is the hybrid country/Heartbreakers-style music in Bella Donna, although Benmont Tench still contributes his organ here. A beat more closer to 80's rock sensibilities, but still tinged with the Welsh Witch's mysterious aura seen through her glass darkly. And yes, the lonely but wildly independent women still prevail in her songs. And don't blame it on her soul, blame it on her wild heart!

The mid-paced single "If Anything Falls" indicates a heavier use in keyboard synths, here provided by Roy Bittan, gets a rock flavour by Waddy Wachtel's trademark "Edge Of Seventeen" guitar. This is another one of those featuring a man she falls for but knows he'll never come back to her.

"Gate And Garden" is a metaphor, where in the garden, is the red rose symbolizing someone's heart, and the game is someone stealing that rose. This mildly upbeat, could-be-a-country-hit piano song.

Roy Bittan's engaging piano serves as the backbone of "Enchanted", with a country-like tinge. Enchanted is how a man felt once seeing the woman, only to have that spell: "Enchanted...you thought you saw something in my eyes/Enchanted...it's a shame that you wanted me."

"Nightbird" sounds like a variation of "Dreams", only more upbeat. Another mysterious woman of the night song. The same mold is given to "Sable And Blond".

"Stand Back" propelled Stevie to the Top Ten on the charts, with an engaging beat, fuzz bass, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, and synthesizers. There is an uncredited artist who did keyboards here. In 1995, he might have the monicker The Artist Formerly Known as the Guy Who Did Uncredited Keyboards On Stevie Nicks's "Stand Back". Now, though, we can call him Prince once again.

Reprising "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" is a difficult chore, and "I Will Run To You", which again features Tom Petty and company. It does not top the catchiness of that song, but the song here at least seems hopeful. At least the bridge is more open to the heart, ending with "If you need me, I'll come runnin'". Sure beats, "You'll never see me again", doesn't it?

"Nothing Ever Changes" falls straight into catchy rock enhanced by synths. Call it a lightweight Survivor-type song.

Very best for last. For me the thing that makes Stevie Nicks special are those heartwrenching ballads like "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You." Well, "Beauty And The Beast" comes close to beating that for sheer emotion. Roy Bittan's piano, the string section. Thinking of the original Jean Cocteau movie version, the black and white schemes matches the melancholy of the song. The description of the lonely beast kind of matches me: "My darling lives in a world that is not mine/An old child misunderstood...out of time." The heartfelt questions asked by Belle, when the Beast allows her to briefly visit her father, is asked poignantly: "Would you die of grieving when I leave" Real three hanky stuff, people.

The Wild Heart, like its predecessor, was produced by Jimmy Iovine and engineered by Steve Yakus. The formula has slightly changed, but with variations that make it better. The sound would change radically with Rock A Little...stay tuned.

Not one bad song on here! I love all of them! If you love Stevie, you'll love this too!

Excellent stuff from Nicks. I bought this CD 'The Wild Heart' after hearing one of the tracks being played on the local radio station and it reminded me of the joys I had when listening to it many years ago on a tape, which is now long since gone. Yes, she rocks, and I didnt stop with buying just this one on CD, I also bought 'Rock a Little' and 'Other Side of the Mirror', at the same time. These are classics. They not only bring back great memories, but are way better than any other music of that genre in the charts today. Rock on Stevie Nicks.