Ten years after their last studio album, Heart are officially back in business — and Nancy Wilson reckons the new material feels unmistakably like Heart.
There are some bands where the words “new album” immediately make you sit up, put the kettle down and start paying attention.
Heart are absolutely one of those bands.
The legendary rock outfit led by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson have completed recording their first Heart studio album in a decade, marking the long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s Beautiful Broken.
And according to Nancy, this isn’t simply a case of dusting off the guitars, knocking out a few tunes and sticking the Heart logo on the front.
This one apparently feels properly Heart.
New songs. A road-tested band. Live recording. Nashville.
Oh yes. Now we’re talking. 🎸🔥
🎤 “THE RECORDING’S ALL DONE”
Nancy Wilson revealed the hugely exciting update during a recent interview with Gold Derby, explaining that recording on the album has now been completed.
In fact, the album even appears to have reached the photoshoot stage — hence Nancy getting her trademark pink back into her hair.
But considerably more important than the hair — although, let’s face it, rock ‘n’ roll hair is serious business — is what Nancy revealed about the music itself.
Heart wrote a collection of new songs before heading to Nashville to record with musicians who had already been playing alongside the Wilson sisters on tour.
That existing chemistry appears to have played a massive part in how the record came together.
Rather than spending months trying to manufacture a band atmosphere inside a studio, these musicians already knew how to play together.
They’d been out there doing it night after night.
And that meant Heart could capture something wonderfully old-school.
🤘 MUCH OF THE RECORD WAS RECORDED LIVE
Now this is the bit that really gets our little Riff Report ears twitching.
According to Nancy, the album was pretty much recorded live.
YES.
MUN.
There is something gloriously appropriate about Heart making a record that way.
We’re living in an era where you can polish a recording until every tiny imperfection has been beaten to death with a laptop. But sometimes rock music needs to sound like human beings actually standing in a room together.
Guitars breathing.
Drums moving air.
Musicians reacting to each other.
A little danger.
A little dirt.
A little “that take felt bloody brilliant, keep it” energy.
Heart have spent decades proving what an extraordinary live band they can be, so taking musicians who had already developed chemistry on the road and putting that chemistry straight onto tape makes enormous sense.
Nancy certainly sounds pleased with the results.
She said:
“It really feels like a Heart record.”
And frankly, those might be the most important words in this whole story.
❤️ ANN AND NANCY — TOGETHER AGAIN
Heart’s history has never exactly been a straight motorway.
It’s been more like navigating the Heads of the Valleys road during roadworks, rain and somebody inexplicably doing 37mph.
There have been massive records, personnel changes, reinventions, breaks, reunions and complicated periods between Ann and Nancy themselves.
But ultimately, the Wilson sisters remain the beating heart — excuse the unavoidable pun — of Heart.
That’s what makes Nancy’s description of this new chapter particularly lovely.
Talking about making music together, she said:
“It’s what we were born to do, and do together.”
That’s a cracking sentiment.
Because whatever twists and turns their story has taken, put Ann Wilson’s powerhouse voice alongside Nancy Wilson’s guitar work and songwriting instincts, and you’ve got one of rock’s great combinations.
Some musical partnerships just make sense.
This is one of them.
🎸 TEN YEARS SINCE BEAUTIFUL BROKEN
The forthcoming record will be Heart’s first studio album since Beautiful Broken arrived in 2016.
Ten years.
To put that into perspective, we’ve survived multiple festival mud baths, approximately 4,000 farewell tours and enough expensive pints to bankrupt a small nation since the last Heart album.
Yet Heart’s catalogue has never really disappeared.
Songs including Barracuda, Crazy on You, Magic Man, Alone and These Dreams remain staples of classic-rock radio and playlists around the world.
And that’s because Heart have always possessed something bigger than nostalgia.
Those songs still absolutely rip.
🔥 Barracuda still has one of rock’s great guitar riffs.
🔥 Crazy on You still demonstrates just how effortlessly Heart could move between delicate acoustic passages and full-blooded rock.
🔥 Alone remains capable of turning an arena into one enormous karaoke session.
And Ann Wilson?
That voice remains one of the great weapons in rock history.
🎶 NEW SONGS — NOT JUST A NOSTALGIA EXERCISE
Perhaps the most encouraging part of the announcement is that Heart haven’t simply returned to revisit the glory days.
They’ve written new material.
That’s important.
A band with Heart’s catalogue could comfortably tour greatest-hits sets for years without recording another note.
Nobody would particularly blame them.
But creativity clearly hasn’t buggered off anywhere.
Nancy says they wrote a bunch of new songs for these sessions, suggesting this next chapter is being treated as a genuine artistic statement rather than merely an excuse for another tour.
And after ten years without a Heart studio record, that’s exactly what we’d want.
Don’t just give us nostalgia.
Give us something new to get obsessed with.
🌎 AND THEN THERE’S… WORLD DOMINATION?!
Because apparently making a new Heart record wasn’t enough to keep everyone busy.
Nancy also revealed that the wider Heart machine has plenty more happening behind the scenes.
Plans reportedly include a world tour, alongside work on both a Heart documentary and a live-action feature film.
That’s quite the bloody diary.
Nancy joked that she hopes 2027 and 2028 could become the years of “Heart world domination.”
You know what?
We’re absolutely fine with that.
Heart domination sounds considerably better than most of the things currently dominating our timelines.
Give us the album.
Give us the documentary.
Give us the film.
Give us Ann Wilson belting out Barracuda while Nancy prowls around with a guitar.
We’re easy to please.
🎬 A HEART DOCUMENTARY COULD BE SOMETHING SPECIAL
And let’s not overlook just how fascinating a proper Heart documentary could be.
This is a band whose story spans more than five decades of rock history.
Their journey includes the explosion of 1970s hard rock, massive commercial success, changing musical fashions, the MTV era, industry pressures, reunions, solo careers and an enormous amount of life lived between two sisters at the centre of it all.
Heart also helped smash through assumptions about what women were supposedly allowed to do in hard rock.
Ann wasn’t standing politely beside the band.
She was fronting the bloody thing.
Nancy wasn’t there as decoration.
She had a guitar strapped around her shoulders and could absolutely tear the roof off.
That legacy matters.
And if the forthcoming documentary digs properly into the triumphs, struggles and complicated relationship between the Wilson sisters rather than becoming a sanitised greatest-hits advert, it could be essential viewing.
Popcorn ready. 🍿🤘
🔥 COULD THIS BE ONE FINAL GREAT HEART CHAPTER?
There has previously been discussion from Nancy about Heart entering the final stretch of their extraordinary career, including the possibility of an eventual farewell tour.
Whether this new record ultimately becomes Heart’s final studio album remains to be seen.
But if it does?
What a way to approach it.
Not by limping quietly towards retirement.
Not by chucking together leftovers.
But by getting the band into Nashville, recording largely live and making something Nancy says genuinely feels like Heart.
That’s exactly how a legendary rock band should approach the later stages of its career.
With guitars plugged in.
Amplifiers humming.
Songs waiting.
And unfinished business.
❤️ THE RIFF REPORT VERDICT
We’re massively intrigued by this one.
Heart don’t need to prove anything.
Their place in rock history is secure.
But that’s precisely why a new record is exciting.
There’s no need to chase whatever happens to be fashionable in 2026.
Heart simply need to sound like Heart.
Ann Wilson singing like only Ann Wilson can.
Nancy Wilson bringing those guitars.
A proper band playing together.
Big melodies.
Big emotion.
And preferably at least one riff nasty enough to frighten the neighbours.
If Nancy Wilson is already saying “it really feels like a Heart record,” that’s one hell of a promising starting point.
Ten years after Beautiful Broken, another chapter is coming.
And after more than half a century of riffs, reinvention, arena-sized choruses and one of the greatest voices ever to stand behind a microphone, Ann and Nancy Wilson apparently still feel that irresistible pull towards making music together.
As Nancy puts it:
“It’s what we were born to do, and do together.”
Beautifully said.
Now get that album released and get yourselves over to the UK.
Heart world domination in 2027?
C’mon then.
We’ll bring the Greggs. 🤘😂❤️
Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud. Zero Apologies.
🎸 The Riff Report
