Ann Wilson has been penning poetry lately. “I consider myself to be a lyricist, now, especially,” the Heart singer, 75, says. “I’m really getting off on writing poetry and prose.” That practice has found its way into lyrics for new music tracing her life’s journey, which has become the subject of a new documentary.
When she calls Rolling Stone, Wilson is days away from the premiere of Ann Wilson — In My Voice and just a few hours before a screening of the film at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Following the debut of the documentary on May 11, she will embark on a nine-city screening and live Q&A tour that will take her and director Barbara Hall from Seattle to Boston. In the fall, Wilson and her band Tripsitter will begin a North American tour that will wrap in October.
When asked how she’s feeling about returning to the road, she easily replies, “I love it. I’m addicted to it, to be honest, and that’s where I feel the most alive — when I’m onstage. That’s where I feel like I can really express myself and not worry about anything.”
While she spent decades blazing trails in Heart with her sister Nancy, In My Voice will focus on Wilson’s individual story, from her childhood in Seattle to her evolution as one of the greatest vocalists and songwriters in rock history. Told in her own words, the documentary draws from a personal archive of home footage, photographs, and journals, and goes back to the days when the Wilson sisters were known as “Little Led Zeppelin.” The film also features interviews with bandmates, family, and artists like Chappell Roan and Kiss‘ Paul Stanley.
“I believe that in my career and in my life, people have a really hard time separating me from Heart, and you know, you can’t blame them,” Wilson says. “It’s been my life’s work. But this is an opportunity for them to know me apart from Heart, apart from music, even — just the things that have happened to me and the journeys I’ve been through now as an older woman.”
“Nothing But Love,” which she wrote in the Nineties with Burt Bacharach, showcases Wilson’s ability to elevate lyrics with her own unique potency. The song, which will be part of the film’s soundtrack, “never saw the light of day until now,” Ann says. “I’ve always really liked it, but it didn’t fit with what was going on in the 1990s at all. It’s just so unlike what was going on at that moment, but it seems natural now. It’s got some soul to it. It’s something that I love hearing, and I love singing. I hope people really get lifted by it.”
- YouTube youtu.be
Wilson says in the film that her sister declined to take part in the documentary, adding with a smile that Nancy has “her own stories to tell, in her own voice.” Thinking about their life together in our interview, she adds, “I think people really latched onto the whole idea of my sister and I as being the core of the group. So it was really interesting when we wanted to do things separately. That was a big part of the journey.”
Ann and Nancy punched through a rock scene in the Seventies that was predominately led by males. “This phenomenon would happen where you would build yourself up and do something really great, and you’d feel really good about it. Then you could get put down and squashed down very easily by the rest of the men,” she recalls. “They could make you feel like you were really silly for even trying. We were lucky enough to have great people around us, but I know other women who were starting up close to our time that had to rebel as hard as they could to get anything happening at all.”
When asked if there were parts of the film that shifted the way she saw her own story, she replies, “I was surprised by a lot of things — by how funny, cheerful, and jokey I used to be when I was younger. Now, I feel more serious about life. Not sad, I’m more philosophic.”
While pinpointing when that change happened, she muses, “Growing and aging, falling in love, having children, all the things that life gives to you that require your serious attention. Sometimes when you’re a lot younger, you just go, ‘Oh, life’s just so wonderful,’ and you don’t think about it that much. But then as time goes along, things get put in your lap that really make you focus. And I think that’s kind of what has helped me mature.”
In July 2024, Ann revealed that she was undergoing cancer treatment and that Heart would have to postpone their remaining North American tour dates at the time. The following September, she shared that she had completed her chemotherapy treatment and was ready to tour again. Then, she broke her arm in three places after falling in a parking lot. The film shows her triumphant return to the stage during Heart’s resumed Royal Flush Tour last year, performing in a wheelchair and without her wig.
“That’s so rockstar of her to be like, ‘Fuck you, I have a broken arm. I’m going onstage and ripping off my wig,'” Roan says in the doc. “That’s, to me, punk.”
“I went through a serious health journey with cancer and came through the other side of it clear,” Wilson says. “I feel fabulous now. I’m probably two years out from it. And of course, you know, I’m on that regimen where every few months you go in for a CAT scan to make sure everything’s still OK. I feel really good.”
Wilson is hopeful about the next generation of artists. She praises Roan and Lucy Dacus, who have both been on her podcast After Dinner Thinks, which she hosts with her friend Criss Cain. “I saw a couple of young women who just know where they’re going. They’re both very young, and they’re already at this amazing point in their careers. I can only imagine where they’re going to be when they’re 40 or 50,” she says. “They have so much potential.”
Trending Stories
Actress Sues James Cameron and Disney for Stealing Her Likeness for ‘Avatar’ Character
Details of Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s ‘It Ends With Us’ Settlement Are Now Public
Phoebe Bridgers Is Coming Back to Earth in 2026
The Radical Life and Surprising Reinvention of Steve Albini
Looking ahead, Wilson says that she hopes people get a better understanding of “what’s behind the music.”
“We wanted to show my life apart from Heart — the songwriting, the road time, and the performing,” she says. “it’s great to be able to break out of something that you’ve done for so many years. That’s a wonderful feeling.”
Albini and Whinna in an undated Polaroid snapshotCourtesy of Heather Whinna
2nd grade Courtesy of the Albini Family
7th grade Courtesy of the Albini Family
11th grade Courtesy of the Albini Family
Big Black in 1986Gail Butensky
Albini built Electrical Audio to embody his recording philosophy in a physical space.© Monfourny Renaud/DAPR/ZUMA
Albini got seriously into poker in his later years, as seen in this photo from the 2008 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.Roger Kisby/Getty Images
Albini and Whinna founded the Letters to Santa charity in 1996.Courtesy of Heather Whinna
Whinna (center), Kim Deal (right), and Electrical Audio staff unveil the Steve Albini Way street sign in November 2024.Althea Legaspi
Althea Legaspi
Althea Legaspi
Pop Albums Are Getting More Ambitious. Can Audiences Keep Up?
This Music May Contain Hope, the second album from British songstress Raye, makes great demands of its audience. The record nearly runs the length of a feature film and most of the 17 songs sound like they could soundtrack one. When the credits roll at the end — she thanks each and every person who helped create the record for six and a half minutes on “Fin.,” — they conclude a gloriously disorienting listening experience. For most of the album, Raye is asking you to come along as she fights and prays through despair and self-criticism to keep hope alive.
Sometimes that battle is filtered through songs that sound like show tunes or gospel hymns. In the case of “Click Clack Symphony,” they crescendo into a dizzying Hans Zimmer composition. There’s a level of patience and reciprocity the album requires from its listeners: At once confrontational and confessional, This Music May Contain Hope is not designed for detached consumption — and it’s part of a surge of recent releases that find artists creating ambitious records that encourage intentional engagement.
Last year, Hayley Williams released Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party as 17 individual singles. Fans created their own sequencing and narratives guided solely by the themes and sounds they chose. A few months later, Rosalía released Lux, a captivating 18-track record performed in 13 languages. It shares a musical complexity with This Music May Contain Hope and an interrogative spirit with The Apple Tree Under the Sea, the debut album from Hemlocke Springs released earlier this year. Each record is as all-consuming as the ideas they’re engaging with — mental anguish, faith and religion, internal and interpersonal implosion.
Raye often describes music as medicinal. Backed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Flames Collective choir on “I Know You’re Hurting,” her melodies and harmonies are bandages and sutures. When she instructs the listener to “close your eyes and let this music get to working,” she exudes the wisdom of an elder passing home remedies through generations. At a time when easier access to music often means increasingly passive listening, these albums replace momentary distraction with connection and compassion. They give the audience something to return to.
Raye included the voices of her grandparents at the start of “Life Boat.” The portion her grandfather contributes, where he says, “I’m living, not giving up,” was recorded just days before his death. More voices flood in across the next four minutes. They all repeat some variation of “I’m not giving up, yet,” some with more desperation than others. “Say it,” Raye says, stern and direct. “Say, ‘I’m not giving up, yet.’” The mantra is set against the kind of thudding club beat that defined the earliest phases of her career. Drums and synthesizers are interspersed with delicately arranged strings, but there’s something transcendent about the contours and echoes of Raye’s voice.
That kind of vocal power is something Rosalía speaks about often: Duende. The flamenco term refers to a type of enchantment delivered through an especially evocative vocal performance. It’s not necessarily about technical prowess, or precision. “There’s something so ethereal and divine about el duende,” Rosalía told The New York Times last year. “El duende is something that visits you. It’s something that comes to you.” It makes the listening experience feel targeted and personal. This funneled into Rosalía on Lux. The record unravels in a way that transcends the barrier of language.
Rosalía begins “Mundo Nuevo” in Spanish. Its translation reveals she’s searching for a hint of truth. She finishes “De Madrugá” in Ukrainian with something searching for her this time. “I’m not looking for revenge,” she sings. “Revenge is looking for me.” The London Symphony Orchestra and the Escolania de Montserrat i Cor Cambra Palau de la Música Catalana choir bolster the album, their arrangements ranging from anxious and erratic to soothing and hypnotic.
Rosalía introduced Lux with the first single “Bergain,” which splinters across German, Spanish, and English. When Yves Tumor’s voice cuts through on the song’s outro, the persistent repetition of “I’ll fuck you till you love me” is harsh and abrasive against the preceding moments. Rosalía chases that friction across Lux. Like her mix of languages, she challenges the listener with existentialism and ruminations on the afterlife. It might turn some listeners away, but the ones who stay are rewarded.
Most of the record was inspired by saints, like Teresa of Ávila or Joan of Arc. Their history adds a third layer to the depth of Lux; Hemlocke Springs similarly fixates on religious motifs on The Apple Tree Under the Sea. She weaves in medieval tales and impulsive adventures made for a storybook. Positioning herself as a character in her fantastical stories gives her audience someone to root for while creating some distance between fiction and reality.
In that sense, The Apple Tree Under the Sea shares a theatrical ease of access with This Music May Contain Hope. Raye’s cautionary tales about traitorous South London men who should be banned from WhatsApp play into the same spectacle as Springs’ “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Ankles” and “Moses.” There’s a prelude towards the end of The Apple Tree Under the Sea that features the voice of a man who sounds far away as he preaches about sin and final judgements. It gets even harder to hear him when the sounds of running horses and marching feet cut through. The suspense builds into an orchestral outro that leads into “Sense (Is),” a booming, optimistic song about making the most of a clean slate and a glass half full.
Springs’ journey is the shortest within this set of albums. It spans 10 songs in just over half an hour, but retains its complexities with winding plot twists. Where she leans into communicating through stories and allegories, Raye through a version of theater, and Rosalía essentially through multinational cathedrals, Williams’ Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party brings listeners into an excruciatingly vivid reality. The achingly haunted “True Believer” walks the streets of Nashville. It moves down Broadway and past repurposed clubs. It attends the churches and questions the rhetoric presented in them. It runs parallel to the moments across the album that brings listeners into a home with fragile glass walls.
The album’s most shattering moment arrives towards the end: “Good ‘Ol Days.” It’s not as distressing as “Negative Self Talk,” or as sobering as “Whim.” It glides along a warm groove and drops burning one-liners with pointed specificity. What fortifies it the most is an appearance from Williams’ grandfather midway through the song. “You are so tacky/I think that’s why I love you so much,” he says in a voicemail message. “I just had to call you first on my new phone/I love you, y’all have a blast, bye.” The interlude emphasizes just how interior the content of the record is, made up of real moments, people, and feelings.
There’s a false perception in pop music that the best way to connect with the masses is to keep things broad — that vague generalizations are easier for people to latch onto. But the hyper-specificity and confrontation on these albums form real connection, creating the feeling that the listener is being trusted with someone else’s secrets and struggles — and safe to embrace their own, too.
There’s bravery in how these artists are driven by conviction. They understand the reach their platforms provide, but have little interest in idolatry. They each use different formats to craft a sense of togetherness even in their most intimate moments, like it means more to show someone they aren’t alone than to tell them. They ask for patience as they remind listeners it’s commendable to try. Some people don’t come to music looking for this; it can be challenging to have an artist in your ear telling you to bring your most shattering emotions and memories to the surface. But those are the kind of records that endure over time.