It was about 30 years ago, in a galaxy far, far... gotcha!... this ain't no Star Wars thingy. I was listening to the radio--FM (we still did that back then), and this song came on. I was mesmerized; she had the most beautiful-powerful voice I had ever heard. (Janis Joplin's was the most powerful; Karen Carpenter's was the most beautiful.) I listened for the artist's name, but the guy didn't back-announce it... damn! Well, eventually, I heard it again: Heart. Ann Wilson... or was it Nancy Wilson? No one made it clear at first which of the "Wilson sisters" was singing the lead. (It was Ann, of course.) It was months before I saw what she/they looked like. (As you may recall, video was not very prevalent back then, and we didn't really care that much--music is about listening, not watching.) When I did finally see Ann Wilson, my God!, she's the most beautiful, totally hot rocker-chick I've ever seen. Still, I've never seen anyone who's better looking than Ann Wilson was back around 1980.
Fast-forward about 25 years. I find out that in the early/mid-80's that Heart's recording company executives were pressuring her to lose weight. Now, as we know from following the RIAA, those guys are not exactly a "brain trust", but, really, how stupid can a bunch of guys be? Did they really think more than a few people bought Heart's albums because of how they looked? or any artist's albums? And anyway, she was absolutely beautiful (and still is) and totally hot (meh); so I tend to believe that the only thing their constant pressuring accomplished was to coax her to gain even more weight--the more you're made to worry about something you don't want, the more it seems to come about. More worry/pressure --> more weight --> health problems --> fewer performances --> less listening pleasure for their fans. Damn, I was pissed about what had been going on.
My point is that a beautiful, healthy woman with immense talent was not simply allowed to be herself and do what she loved to do. Recording industry executives: what a bunch of a$$hole$, then and now.
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