Heart, lead by Ann and Nancy Wilson, is considered a — or the — Grand Dame of hard rock and heavy metal.

Not only do they have more hit singles and AOR tracks than most other bands (songs we’d go over in detail but they’re listed on this very page in order of popularity) but in some ways deeper respect than many, both for their own groundbreaking talent and appeal and some unusual recognition thereof, including having been picked to perform Stairway to Heaven for Led Zeppelin themselves at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012, making Robert Plant and company actually cry. Not Rush, not Aerosmith, nor any of the other bands beloved rock/metal that — along with Ann and Nancy’s band — followed Zeppelin by one generation. Just Heart.

Starting in the mid seventies, Heart forged a unique and powerful sound outstanding in their field, and was unusual in topping the charts well into their own second decade in the late eighties, becoming a staple of MTV’s rotation, albeit sometimes crammed by the industry into music videos that the bandmates despised and comment on to this day.