Heart
Beautiful Broken
Release Date: Jul 8, 2016
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Contemporary Pop/Rock, Album Rock, Hard Rock, Arena Rock
Record label: Concord
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Album Review: Beautiful Broken by Heart
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
Revisiting lost gems, creating new ones. An odd one. A new Heart album where much of it isn’t new. What the band have done is dig deep into the catalogue, finding great songs from three almost ignored albums. But it’s not just a case of bringing these up to date, so much as celebrating them..
Based on rating 7/10
Heart’s strengths lie in ‘70s-style classic rock. It’s where they excel, mining acoustic folk and hard rock—light and shade—à la Led Zeppelin, one of their prime influences. Sure, their biggest sales came in the mid to late ‘80s when they were remade in spandex and big hair as a slick MTV-friendly band depending on outside hit-factory songwriters.
Based on rating 6/10
On Beautiful Broken, Heart decide to tread a path well worn by vintage rockers: revisiting their catalog. This is an exercise often fraught with peril. That said, while Ann and Nancy Wilson do stumble, they've learned from predecessors' mistakes. Seven of these ten cuts were previously recorded, but none are considered Heart standards.
Opinion: Excellent
Given the shaky state of the recording industry these days, many veteran bands aren’t spending the time or money to create new albums to coincide with their tours. “Why would I make a record?” the Who’s Roger Daltrey asked hypothetically in a Rolling Stone interview. “There’s no royalties, so I can’t ever see that happening.” What we’re getting instead are packages like Paul McCartney’s “Pure McCartney,” a cherry-picked compilation of his post-Beatles music, and this new Heart album, which includes a couple of new songs among seven tracks from the archives.
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