Ann Wilson’s favourite vocal album: “I love hearing him this naked”
Ann Wilson might have mastered the art of blending various genres at once, but her musical favourites usually always centre around how much they manage to grip her heart. Though her love for music spawned from an appreciation of the greats, like The Beatles, many of those she discovered along the way taught her about the art of eclecticism and the heart of filtering emotions into a single voice.
Wilson’s connection with powerful singers began much earlier after discovering albums like Harry Belafonte’s Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, which exposed her to the power of singing at around eight years old. Belafonte’s vocal range and the various emotions he injects into his performance showed a young Wilson what exceptional vocalisation could be, subconsciously planting a lifelong fixation in her mind.
After that, she accrued a collection of early iteration rock ‘n’ roll before moving on to esteemed works like Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends, The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, The Moody Blues’ In Search of the Lost Chord, Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV, and, of course, anything by The Beatles that she could get her hands on. With Zeppelin, in particular, she realised her appreciation for eclecticism and the explosiveness of it done right, which she then filtered into her own work within Heart.
Wilson also fell in love with folk music and exceptional singer-songwriters for their ability to capture a moment, abstract idea, mundane event, or unexpected happenstance and make it sound like one of the most relatable and beautiful revelations in the world. Joni Mitchell, for instance, created “a lifelong friend” for Wilson when she penned Hejira because the “songs are full of the rich imagery of the things and people she encounters and interlaced with her poetic, unforgiving introspections”.
Clearly, therefore, her unrelenting passion for excellent vocalists, skilled wordsmiths, and gorgeous, lyrical imagery was most satisfied when she discovered Chris Whitley’s Perfect Day. This deeply rooted blues affair became popular because Whitley used sparse instrumentation and a weathered voice, giving the project a broader storytelling and minimalistic feel.
Whitley’s jazzy cover songs are also purposefully intimate, which often arrives in direct contrast to the song’s original versions and opens up a lot of space as a result of Whitley’s voice and guitar taking centre stage. While he does include other instruments like drums and a bass guitar, these are usually really subtle and only appear to serve the emotional intensity of the songs.
‘Perfect Day’, for instance, besides being a cover of an already typically gloomy Lou Reed track, infuses it with a more melancholic atmosphere that adds a ghostly dimension that feels almost sinister in parts. For Wilson, this kind of reimagination is only passable if delivered by someone who knows exactly how to use stripped-back arrangements to their advantage and come up with something almost completely original.
“I love this album because it is so intimate,” she told Spin. Detailing the elements she enjoys the most, she pinpointed Whitley’s “tangled, smoky vulnerability” and the lack of effort he places on “prettying things up with production”. Perfect Day, to Wilson, resonates due to its “4am, relaxed and buzzed atmosphere” and its ability to take existing songs “somewhere wonderful”.
She concluded: “As a singer, he is in my top four of all time, and I love hearing him this naked. You can feel him right through the skin to the bone and all the way down to the soul.”
Although Wilson has used simple and stripped-back compositions throughout her career, what impressed her most about Whitley’s work is the effortless way he delivers emotionally powerful tracks with minimal production elements while pulling from various genres. It’s simple yet connected, grounded yet dense, in a way that places more focus on the viscera than anything restricted by the limitations of everyday descriptions.
