Birthdate: March 16, 1954
Band: Heart, Lovemongers, solo
Instrument: Guitar, Vocals
Age in 2024: 70
Nancy Lamoureux Wilson was born on March 16th, 1954, in San Francisco, California. At the age of 9, Nancy, along with her older sister Ann, found her first major influence in music in the historic performance from The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, an event she described in an interview with The Believer, “The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me…that was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians.” Early on, Nancy went through a few attempts to be a performing musician, then, shortly after Ann joined the group Hocus Pocus, which was renamed Heart, Nancy was brought in by her sister to complete the band’s lineup.
Heart would go on to grow rapidly in the late 1970s, with their second album, Little Queen (1977), containing “Barracuda” which reached number 11 on the Billboard charts and their fourth album, Dog & Butterfly (1978) would sell a million copies in the first month and get certified platinum by the RIAA within a year. The band would continue to dominate in the 1980’s, with their self-titled 1985 album becoming their first number-one album, was certified 5 times platinum, and had the smash hit “What About Love”; and their follow-up, 1987’s Bad Animals, had “Alone” which was the second-biggest single of 1987, just under The Bangles “Walk Like An Egyptian”. The 1990s had similar success for the band before Nancy went on a hiatus from Heart in 1995, as she wanted to start a family and work on film scores with her then-husband Cameron Crowe.
During her hiatus, Nancy still occasionally came out for benefit shows with Lovemongers, a group originally formed by Nancy and her sister to play a Red Cross benefit during the Gulf War, and a solo acoustic show. Nancy also went out on a short, 12-date tour with her sister and released a full-length Lovemongers album and a Lovemongers Christmas album, as well as composing songs for Crowe’s film Almost Famous (2000) which earned her nominations for a Sierra Award, a PFCS Award, and an Anthony Asquith Award.
In 2002 Nancy came back to Heart, going on her first full tour in 10 years, followed by 2004’s Jupiters Darling, Heart’s first album since 1993. In 2009 Nancy released a solo children’s album called Baby Guitars and started to work on the next heart Album Red Velvet Car which did remarkably well, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard 200 chart. In the 2010s, Heart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nancy and Ann got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and released Fanatic (2012) and Beautiful Broken (2016) before going on another hiatus. In this time, Nancy formed a new band called Roadcase Royale which released its first album in 2017. Heart returned in 2019 with a summer tour, and Nancy released the solo album You and Me in 2021 before beginning to tour under Nancy Wilson’s Heart the following year.
