(Credits: Far Out / Press)
Fri 19 December 2025 20:30, UK
Ann Wilson is in a special position in the rock scene. She has her sister, Nancy Wilson, by her side, providing great inspiration and propping up Ann’s main vocals with her own serious talent, as well as that rattly guitar.
However, when considering her biggest influence, Ann couldn’t exactly gesture to her sister each and every time a nameless publication stuck a tiny microphone in front of her and asked. Plus, to make great, rounded music, one must reach outside of the suffocation of the familial zone. Growing up sharing hairbrushes and hand-me-downs isn’t exactly conducive to music influence, anyway.
Wilson has enjoyed renewed attention as of late, after the Midwest princess Chappel Roan took to covering the Heart classic, ‘Barracuda’, showcasing Wilson’s soaring, hearty vocals, her dramatic mezzo-soprano voice bolstered by an emotional delivery. But Roan is way after Wilson’s original foray into the spotlight, so… Who was her biggest inspiration? Surely someone with an equal amount of rock grit?
Not quite. See, underneath that rock, heat is a dynamic folk beauty that could have only ever come from the one and only Joni Mitchell. Sure enough, Wilson told American Songwriter in 2022 that Mitchell was the biggest influence of all on her lyrics, her performance, her rhythm… Everything.
“Joni Mitchell is the one who influenced me the most,” she said. “She’s just such a consummate musician and poet. Those are the kinds of female artists who push the boundaries.”
Mitchell is, sometimes, like that annoying girl in the class who juggles just about every ball and manages to pirouette and hold a whistle note, while doing so. While spinning in circles, should a boundary befall her path, she’ll kick it to the side without another look back.
The pair share more than their desire to push boundaries, though both are acclaimed and brave female musicians. In 2025, both Wilson and Mitchell are still performing live, the former alongside Heart on their Royal Flush tour. They have both had to overcome recent obstacles in life, too; Wilson successfully completed chemotherapy for cancer, which led to the postponement of several dates, and Mitchell is in happy recovery from a brain aneurysm in 2015.
The thread that connects them runs deeper still if we look at their lyricism: On the classic Heart track, ‘Dreamboat Annie’, Ann sings decadently, “Heading out this morning, into the sun / Riding on the diamond waves, little darlin’ one,” collaging love and disillusionment in the blue haze of the horizon meeting the sea.
On Mitchell’s side, the sun stands in for all sorts of sleepy retributions dealt with in the forever arch above our heads: “Now comes the morning,” she sings on ‘Come to the Sunshine’, “Wet with the kiss of midnight / Shadows stayed sulking in the way / Sunshine for dreaming / Blackest magic to believe in.”
The connection between glimmery folk and spitting rock has never been stronger, and more pertinent, than between Heart and Mitchell.
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