Dog & Butterfly
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Album Summary
Dog and Butterfly came into this world in 1978 on Portrait Records, and honey, it was something special from the moment it hit the shelves. Produced by the masterful Mike Flicker — a man who understood the Heart sound like few others — this fourth studio album found Ann and Nancy Wilson at a creative crossroads, reaching for something that was at once heavier and more poetic than what had come before. Recorded during a time when the band had already proven themselves to the world, this record was Heart digging deeper, stretching wider, and refusing to be boxed in by anyone's expectations of what a rock band could or should be.
Reception
- Dog and Butterfly achieved serious commercial muscle, climbing to #17 on the Billboard 200 and cementing Heart's place among the elite rock acts of the late 1970s.
- The album was embraced warmly by rock radio, with tracks finding their way into heavy rotation and keeping the Heart name on the lips of DJs and listeners coast to coast.
- Critical reception recognized the album as a confident and maturing statement from a band that had already earned its stripes, praising the balance between hard-driving rock and more nuanced, layered songwriting.
Significance
- Dog and Butterfly stands as one of the finest examples of late-1970s rock's capacity for duality — the Wilson sisters wielding thunderous guitar energy and delicate acoustic beauty in the same breath, often within the same song.
- The album showcases Ann Wilson's voice as a true force of nature, one of the most commanding instruments in all of rock and roll, elevated here by arrangements that gave her both fire and room to breathe.
- As a document of Heart's artistic range, Dog and Butterfly remains essential listening — a record that proved a hard rock band could be as musically sophisticated as they were viscerally powerful, and that the Wilson sisters answered to no one but their own creative vision.
Tracklist
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A1 Cook With Fire 139
4:57
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A2 High Time 143
3:21
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A3 Hijinx 129
3:30
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A4 Straight On 117
5:09
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B1 Dog And Butterfly —
5:21
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B2 Lighter Touch 137
5:03
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B3 Nada One 78
5:23
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B4 Mistral Wind 172
6:42
Artist Details
Heart is a rock powerhouse born out of Seattle, Washington in the early 1970s, led by the Wilson sisters — Ann and Nancy — who blazed a trail as women fronting a hard rock band at a time when the genre was almost exclusively a boys' club, blending heavy guitar riffs with folk-tinged balladry and Ann's absolutely volcanic vocal range to create something the world had never quite heard before. Albums like Dreamboat Annie and Little Queen put them on the map in the mid-70s, and their influence stretched all the way into the arena rock era of the 80s, proving they weren't just a moment but a movement. Heart stands as one of the most significant acts in rock history, not only for the sheer quality of their music but for shattering barriers and showing the world that women could command a stage with the same fire and authority as anyone who ever picked up a Gibson.
