Bella Donna & Wild Heart= End of Story!

[drzubritsky]

Wild Heart is interesting in that it generates pretty strongly divided opinions. I remember my older sister, who was 27 at the time and a fairly strong Stevie fan, buying it upon release and really hating it...too many draggy, mystical songs for her taste. And of course there was that scathing Rolling Stone review by Chris Connelly. While I thought the RS review was unfairly harsh, I could see some of his points.

I like WH for the most part, but I think it could have been much better. I feel it's a mix of a handful of really strong tracks ("Stand Back", "If Anyone Falls", "Wild Heart", "Enchanted") with some fairly pedestrian songs and one pretentious misfire ("Beauty And The Beast" - I know, shoot me, but I just never found this to be the masterpiece that Stevie apparently believes it is). I always considered "Nightbird" to be a near-miss...it has a lovely chorus and some interesting lyrics, but something about the arrangement never quite gelled, and it was my first WTF reaction to a vocal of hers during the first verse.

Essentially, too much of WH is for die-hard Stevie fans only and doesn't connect with casual fans the way the BD songs did. I think if she had swapped some of the lesser cuts ("Gate & Garden", "I Will Run To You", "Sable On Blonde") with stronger material, she would have had sales approaching the Bella Donna mark since she was still a pretty hot commodity at that time.