The iconic classic rock ballad band, Heart, fittingly explores the depths of emotion with popular hits What About Love? And a Barracuda, Butterfly, Dreamboat and now, a Red Velvet Car.
Performing sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson deliver their well-known tunes at the CN Centre Feb. 24 with opener Carmen Townsend.
To introduce new songs on their recently-released album Red Velvet Car, Ann said during a concert she'll takes a minute to talk to the audience.
"If you just throw it at them, it's harder," said Ann. "So I tell them, OK this is new and this is what it's about and check it out. Most of the time people are really liking what they hear."
Heart toured most of last year to promote Red Velvet Car, Ann added.
So many of Heart's songs have stood the test of time where people can still belt out the words to Crazy On You, Magic Man and Dreamboat Annie, which debuted on Dreamboat Annie, Heart's first album in 1976.
The Wilson sisters continue to create memorable songs.
"Nancy and I are both great writers of endless notebooks filled with words," said Ann. "We will refer to our notebooks and whenever we do a song that ends up with Heart it comes from some kind of real-life situation. All the songs are real and autobiographical."
The Wilson family loved music and would listen to all kinds when Nancy and Ann were kids.
"Our parents were particularly into the groups of their era like Peter, Paul & Mary, Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte - those types of people in the Beatnik era," said Ann. "And that's when we got it in our heads we could sing harmonies together."
When the sisters were old enough to play guitars they were listening to the Beatles, the Stones and Led Zeppelin.
"We learned how to rock from them," said Ann. "I guess we put the two together [harmonies and rock] and made up our own new thing."
Being women, their songs came from a female perspective, she said.
"We don't come out and say this is a song about what it's like to be a woman," laughed Ann. "We're just artists and as people we hope our songs can speak just as loud to men."
It wasn't easy being a woman in the rock 'n roll world in the '70s and some things don't change all that much, Ann said.
There are very strong rules about what role women can play in the entertainment industry, she added.
"Our initial struggle was for credibility - just to be taken seriously and it took a few years," said Ann. "People would say to Nancy 'You sure are a beautiful woman and you're such a hot girl is that guitar really plugged in?' And stuff like that could be really insulting because she works so hard."
It is an on-going struggle, Ann said, but some things have changed because there are millions of women in the pop world.
"But you still see them coming in one way and then within a couple of years they've been made over to look a certain way," Ann said. "So things haven't come that far in other ways."
Heart keeps making hits and have sold more than 35 million copies of their albums.
During the concert at CN Centre Heart will play a combination of their greatest hits and new songs.
"We hope everyone comes to the concert," said Ann. "It's going to be a fun night."
Tickets are at all Ticketmaster outlets.
