Heart’s Ann Wilson on music industry misogyny: “Nobody took you seriously”
Ann Wilson from classic rock band Heart has opened up about the difficulties she and her sister Nancy have experienced as women in the music industry.
The band formed in 1973, finding mainstream success in the mid-to-late 1970s. However, Wilson recalls the rampant sexism she and her sister battled in the rock scene to be taken seriously.
“I think that people used to misinterpret us a lot,” she told Audacy Check In, adding, “The only real image for rock women that people understood at that time was like the Lita Ford-type, real, real sexy kind of porn girl image. And Nancy and I have never been that. We’ve always been more down-to-earth gals that you can go camping with.”
She continued, “So I think in the early days, there was a lot of misinterpretation going on. Especially in the ’80s, they really wanted Nancy to be the front and centre, wearing almost no clothes, jumping off the cliff with a guitar. So she had to go through a lot of that.”
Wilson also explained how challenging it was for women to enter the music industry in the first place. “I don’t know whether the woman thing in rock was the chicken or the egg, because for a long time, women didn’t even attempt to enter the rock scene because it was just too hard.”
She continued, “I mean, nobody took you seriously. Nobody gave you any credibility. So you didn’t even try. But once a few of us kicked the door open enough to squeeze through, more and more women started to come in and see that it was okay and you could do it.”
However, she asserted that “it’s a struggle because you’re always gonna be misinterpreted.”
Watch the full conversation below.
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