Hollywood Reporter: Nirvana, The Supremes, Ma Rainey, Slick Rick to Receive Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards. The academy announced Thursday that Nile Rodgers, Bobby McFerrin and Heart’s Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson will also receive the coveted honor at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony on Feb. 4.
Grammy: Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson are being recognized as Lifetime Achievement Award honorees for their creative work with the rock band Heart. Heart was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, sold over 35 million records, garnered four GRAMMY Award nominations, landed 10 Top 10 albums, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, had several No. 1 hits, and achieved “the longest span of top 10 albums on the Billboardcharts by a female-led band.” Heart’s influence can be palpably felt everywhere from rock and heavy metal to hip-hop and pop. As a result, their music resonates in nearly every corner of pop culture.
Billboard: The Wilson sisters – Ann, 72 and Nancy, 68 – are being recognized for their work with Heart. This marks the first time a pair who weren’t known as an ongoing duo has received a lifetime achievement award. Four formal duos have been honored – The Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel, The Louvin Brothers, and Sam & Dave. Heart received four Grammy nominations, divided evenly between pop and rock performance categories, but they have yet to win. Heart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Heart landed seven top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, including the No. 1 Heart, and had nine top 10 hits on the Hot 100, including the No. 1 hits “These Dreams” and “Alone.”
Updated February 3rd 2023: Nancy will be attending. Ann has a prior engagement to play at a benefit. Ann has made a video, that might be played at the ceremony.
Updated February 5th 2023: Billboard: Nancy Wilson, who received a lifetime achievement award along with her absent sister Ann Wilson, recalled that when they formed Heart in 1974, they wanted to be The Beatles. “Not to be married to them, or to be the girlfriend of one of them, but to beThe Beatles.”
Wilson added “What an honor to stand next to this force of nature (referring to Ann) and rock our butts off.” She thanked such industry boosters as Don Passman, Rob Light and John Sykes and thanked the audience “for helping us survive the sheer insanity of this rock and roll circus. We couldn’t care less about the gender politics of the time and we still don’t.” Merck Mercuriadis, founder of Hipgnosis Songs, accepted the award on Ann Wilson’s behalf. He recalled being a 12-year-old in Canada and hearing Heart’s first hit “Magic Man” on the radio and said he has been a fan ever since. He noted that Ann is still going strong – featured on a track on Disturbed’s new album and on Dolly Parton’s upcoming rock album.
Updated February 6th 2023:
RollingStone.com: Wearing a full black suit embroidered with flowers, Heart’s Nancy Wilson stepped onto the stage with small curtsey. “Just me tonight,” said Nancy, noting her sister Ann’s absence while accepting the achievement—right after, Merck Mercuriadis, the CEO of Hipgnosis, accepted the award for the lead singer. “In 1974, I found my calling which pulled me out of my college dorm room to capture this dream I had with my sister, since we were little kids,” she continued. “And the dream was to be the Beatles. Not to be married to them or the girlfriend of one of the Beatles—but to be the Beatles.” While her sister wasn’t in the theater that evening, Nancy made it a point to make her presence felt. “Thank you, Ann fucking Wilson. You know, what an honor to stand next to this powerhouse force of nature,” she smiled. “All those big stages, those big, you know, stormy summer stages all those years, and just rock our butts off together. And we pulled each other through all of these lifetimes and universes that we built together.” “We were two stubborn military brats, who could not have cared less about the gender politics at the time, and we still do not,” added Nancy. “Our style and Nirvana’s style were made to rage against the machine, and use our passion and our creativity as a powerful weapon against the status quo,” said Wilson, giving a shout out to their fellow Seattle comrades. “We followed our muse through the decades. We blazed a few trails and broke a few glass ceilings along the way for both men and women.”
Updated February 7th 2023: Variety: The event’s other honorees mostly spoke at greater length, among them Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson, who spoke of the beginnings of the band she formed with her sister in the 1970s. “In 1974, I followed my calling, which pulled me out of my college dorm room to capture this dream I had with my sister since we were little kids,” Wilson said. “And the dream was to be the Beatles. Not to be married to them or the girlfriend of one of the Beatles — it was to be the Beatles. So we kind of just sort of did that without any sort of gender-specific thing in our minds.” Speaking about her sister, Nancy said, “Thank you, Ann fucking Wilson. It was an honor to stand next to this powerhouse force of nature, Ann fucking Wilson, on all of those big, stormy summer stages all those years and just rock our butts off together. And we pulled each other through all of these lifetimes and universes that we built together. From every stage in every far-flung field of mud with a generator to the Royal Albert Hall with a full orchestra, we were there together… from a drive-in theater with one podium, one microphone and two acoustic guitars outside before the movie started to the Kennedy Center Honors honoring Zeppelin.” She offered one correction on the introductory video: “Nearly 50 years, not 60!” Ann Wilson was not present for the event, sending Hipgnosis Songs founder Merck Mercuriadis, who described himself as “the custodian of her catalog,” to speak on her behalf. (The two sisters have mostly toured separately in recent years, with Ann telling an interviewer last spring that any perception they were feuding was “a myth,” but that the two “have different ideas for what Heart should be, and we haven’t figured out a compromise yet.”) Mercuriadis noted that Ann has sung on forthcoming albums by Disturbed and Dolly Parton. He also spoke about being a 12-year-old in Canada hearing “Magic Man” for the first time, and being entranced by hearing the simple word “yeah” that followed the line “He looked right through me.” “Music still saves my life every day,” said Nancy. “I love that there are two bands here from Seattle tonight, and we’re proud to say Seattle bands were never built for compromise. … We followed our muse through the decades. We blazed a few trails and broke a few glass ceilings along the way for both men and women.” Wilson closed her speech by saying the lifetime award is “gonna look super sweet on my grandma’s piano in my my home studio.”
Grammy.com: Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart are verging on the half-century mark since they formed their groundbreaking group in 1974. Through five decades of changing musical eras, their impact has not waned. From the ’70s, when Ann set the blueprint for rock frontwomen and Nancy established her oft-imitated and never-quite-duplicated guitar playing style, through the ’80s when the band dominated MTV, to 2019 when the sisters spearheaded the all-female Love Alive tour, the Wilsons broke barriers as musicians, singers and songwriters.
The two started early in music. Nancy showed marked virtuosity on the acoustic guitar at 9 years old. Ann, four years her senior, was already singing in the style of blues greats — albeit filtered through rock and roll.
Their 1976 debut album, Dreamboat Annie, spawned the hits “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You,”which remain staples on classic rock radio. “Barracuda” from 1977’s Little Queen followed suit. Drawing from folk, hard rock and the daring to not be pigeonholed by their gender, the Wilsons were among the few women granted authority on a rock stage dominated by men.
By the time the sisters glammed up and became MTV staples and chart-toppers in the mid-‘80s, they were proven songwriters and already a multiplatinum-selling band. It was the GRAMMY-nominated Billboard No.1 album Heart that catapulted Ann and Nancy into the musical stratosphere. The album’s hits were ubiquitous, all cracking the Top 10. Its flagship song, “These Dreams”— sung by Nancy — hit No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100. A year later, the band snagged that position again with “Alone” from their album Bad Animals, and with it, two more GRAMMY nominations. They continued their GRAMMY nomination streak with 1990’s Brigade.
Over the course of 16 studio albums, the pair have sold 35 million records and had seven Top 10 albums. Ann and Nancy also charted on the New York Times bestsellers list with their 2013 memoir, Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll.
Ann and Nancy individually extended their musical reach to the silver screen. Ann through her iconic voice on the unforgettable songs “Almost Paradise,” “Best Man in the World” and “Surrender to Me” on stellar soundtracks from the timeless films Footloose, The Golden Child and Tequila Sunrise, respectively. Nancy through her essential, award-winning scores for the box office smashes Say Anything, Almost Famous and Vanilla Sky.
Their abilities have continuously attracted accomplished musicians of all genders who speak with reverence about their skills and consider performing alongside as a distinct privilege. Their songs have been sampled by the likes of Eminem, Lil Wayne, G-Eazy, and Nas.
No matter how much they accomplish, the need to create is ever present with the Wilson sisters. In the last couple of years, they have both released solo albums. Nancy with her first album of original material in 2021 with You and Me, and Ann in 2022 with her third solo album, Fierce Bliss.
Honors and accolades abound for Ann and Nancy: the ASCAP Pop Music Awards Founders Award, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But they remain active. As Nancy said in her Rock Hall acceptance speech: “We’re not finished rocking just yet.”
Updated March 7th 2023:
So Ann is going to be in Dolly Parton’s rock album. I hope Nancy is on it too, specially since she expressed interest in doing that with Dolly before anyone else.
Also, it seems Ann actually couldn’t attend the Boston fundraiser either. The fundraiser website mentions there was a last minute change and Ann wouldn’t be able to perform. Might have something to do with cancelled flights.
Thank you! What a strange situation. No flights to LA as well?
@THDS I only heard someone mention there could be cancelled flights to Boston due to winter storm, but I’m not American and don’t really know if that’s the case right now.
Not from US either. I’m sure we’ll ge to know soon.