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.”
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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 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.”
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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.”
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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.”
