The two songwriters who shaped Ann Wilson: “Their lyrics are so well done”
For any lyricist, songs are about more than just a decent bunch of words put together. Each line is a piece of poetry that has to complement the others perfectly, and even if they don’t make the most sense when taken together, they represent a certain feeling whenever someone hears them in context. Although Ann Wilson always put a somewhat mystical bent to her work in Heart, she knew that she could always rely on Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon for inspiration.
Because looking at what Heart was meant to be, there was a distinct blend of both of those artists’ previous works. Their flirtations with different time signatures gave them a progressive edge just like Gabriel had in Genesis, and Nancy Wilson’s penchant for playing finger-picked acoustic guitar passages couldn’t have come without studying a handful of Simon and Garfunkel tunes as well.
But there was something beyond just the raw sound of their music that drew people in. It’s about relating to the person behind the lyric, and in the case of both Gabriel and Simon, each of them represented the idea of music doing something more to you than simply entertaining people on the radio.
Simon had already started expanding his palette to include pieces of jazz in his vocabulary, and by the time he got around to making Graceland, he had put together a world music album that would define what people would classify as traditional pop. It was about pushing music forward, and Gabriel was no exception.
Combing through his solo years, his work with African musicians on So and his need to stand with the downtrodden on tracks like ‘Biko’ let people know he was using his medium for the right reasons. And even though it took him decades to release new material, it was all in the service of making the world a better place so he could have time to make new music.
For Wilson, this was as much of a life lesson as it was a songwriting lesson, telling Songfacts when asked about her songwriting heroes, “Peter Gabriel all the time. Paul Simon all the time. Because they’re lyricists. Their lyrics are so inspiring and so well done. For Peter Gabriel, it would be ‘Mercy Street’ and maybe ‘Don’t Give Up.’ For Paul Simon, it would be ‘Graceland’ and ‘Hearts And Bones.’”
And looking at both of her picks for their songs, Wilson has taken that format and run with it throughout her career. Not every one of her tunes was meant to be as heavy as ‘Barracuda’, but outside of the glossy ballads, ‘Mercy Street’ taps into something a lot more insular than most rock bands would ever dare to touch.
At the same time, ‘Graceland’ is the kind of galloping piece of rock and roll that keeps everyone in a great mood throughout the record, all while slipping in little pieces of lyrical brilliance in between. Then again, that’s probably why Wilson resonates with both artists so well. Gabriel and Simon could write emotionally gripping tunes, but whether it was a ballad or a rocker, they never forgot to leave their audience with some food for thought as well.
