Heart Like a Wheel is Linda Ronstadt’s Grammy Award-winning fifth solo album recording and the last of her studio projects for Capitol Records, released in late 1974. The result, a more refined and streamlined mix of country and rock than her previous releases, proved to be Ronstadt’s commercial breakthrough. Critics later said the album, with less of a folk influence, standardized the musical formula for her subsequent albums in the 1970’s. Released in late 1974, Heart Like a Wheel became the first of her three number 1 peaks on the Billboard album chart starting February 15, 1975, alongside the number 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, “You’re No Good”. (More from Wikipedia)
Other Canadian rockers include Bryan Adams, k.d. lang, Rush, Loverboy, Klaatu, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and so many more. Anna McGarrigle wrote the title song “Heart Like a Wheel” on Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel that was later used as the name of a 1983 film also called Heart Like a Wheel about drag racer Shirley Muldowney; while Kate McGarrigle was married to Chapel Hill-born singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III whose union resulted in the birth of two more musicians, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. I have a CD somewhere that features the whole family if I remember right.
(April 2013)
After working on a few tracks on Don’t Cry Now, Peter Asher helmed Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel; it was a #1 album and featured a #1 single, “You’re No Good”.
(October 2013)
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Janis Ian’s biggest hit song “At Seventeen” (1975) and the accompanying album, Between the Lines both reached #1 on the Adult Contemporary Singles and Hot 100 Albums Billboard charts, respectively, with much less drama than had befallen “Society’s Child”. What’s more, Janis Ian won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female that year, beating out Linda Ronstadt (whose breakthrough album Heart Like a Wheel had been nominated), as well as Olivia Newton-John and Helen Reddy.
(January 2014)
