rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...
band
Heart
The heart is a muscular Organ (biology), organ found in humans and other animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels. The heart and blood vessels together make the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrie ...
, released in 1977 on their third studio album, ''
Little Queen
''Little Queen'' is the third studio album by American rock band Heart, released in May 1977 by Portrait Records. The album was recorded and mixed at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle, Washington, from February to April 1977. On June 29, 2004, a r ...
'', and was released as the album's lead single. The song peaked at number 11 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. "Barracuda" was named the 34th-best hard rock song of all time by
VH1
VH1 (originally an initialism for Video Hits One) is an American basic cable television network that launched on January 1, 1985, and is currently owned by the MTV Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global's networks division based in New Y ...
in 2009.
The song was included on the compilation albums ''
Greatest Hits/Live
''Greatest Hits/Live'' is a compilation album of greatest hits, live recordings and new tracks by American rock band Heart, released on November 29, 1980, by Epic Records. The album was issued in North America as a double LP. The first disc is a ...
Greatest Hits
A greatest hits album or best-of album is a type of compilation album that collects popular and commercially successful songs by a particular artist or band. While greatest hits albums are typically supported by the artist, they can also be creat ...
Strange Euphoria
''Strange Euphoria'' is a career-spanning box set album by Heart. The three-CD compilation features several of their hit songs as well as songs by The Lovemongers, solo songs by Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson, a recording by the pre-Heart group Ann ...
Ann Wilson
Ann Dustin Wilson (born June 19, 1950) is an American singer best known as the lead singer of the rock band Heart.
Wilson has been a member of Heart since the early 1970s; her younger sister, Nancy Wilson, is also a member of the band. One o ...
revealed in interviews that the song was about Heart's anger towards
Mushroom Records
Mushroom Records was an Australian flagship record label, founded in 1972 in Melbourne. It published and distributed many successful Australian artists and expanded internationally, until it was merged with Festival Records in 1998. Festival ...
, who as a publicity stunt released a made-up story of an incestuous affair involving Ann and her sister Nancy Wilson. The song particularly focuses on Ann's rage towards a male radio promoter who came up to her after a concert asking how her "lover" was. She initially thought he was talking about her boyfriend, band manager Michael Fisher. After he revealed he was talking about her sister Nancy, Ann became outraged, went back to her hotel room, and wrote the original lyrics of the song. When she relayed the incident to Nancy, she, too, was infuriated. Nancy joined Ann and contributed a melody and bridge.
Producer
Mike Flicker
Mike Flicker (born 1950) is an American Record producer, music producer in Los Angeles who has numerous credits on music and film projects. He is critically acclaimed for his work with Heart (band), Heart.Magazine
A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...
''—which the label still released in an unfinished form—and instead sign with the newly formed
Portrait Records
Portrait Records was a sister record label, label of Epic Records and later of Columbia Records. Notable artists Cyndi Lauper and Sade (band), Sade signed with Portrait, but their contracts were absorbed by Epic after that incarnation of the lab ...
to make another record, ''
Little Queen
''Little Queen'' is the third studio album by American rock band Heart, released in May 1977 by Portrait Records. The album was recorded and mixed at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle, Washington, from February to April 1977. On June 29, 2004, a r ...
''. As Flicker put it,
"'Barracuda' was created conceptually out of a lot of this record business bullshit. Barracuda could be anyone from the local promotion man to the president of a record company. That is the
barracuda
A barracuda is a large, predatory, ray-finned, saltwater fish of the genus ''Sphyraena'', the only genus in the family Sphyraenidae, which was named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldw ...
. It was born out of that whole experience."
Music
In a March 2019 interview with ''Gear Factor'', Nancy Wilson said:
"We'd been opening for a band called
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest Cities in Israel, city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. In its population was . Known as "the Arab capital of Israel", Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious, economic and ...
in Europe and also for
Queen
Queen most commonly refers to:
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen (band), a British rock band
Queen or QUEEN may also refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Q ...
. And Nazareth had a hit with a
Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitch ...
song that they covered
n 1973
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''.
History
...
called "
This Flight Tonight
"This Flight Tonight" is a song originally by Joni Mitchell, from her 1971 album ''Blue''. Scottish hard rock band Nazareth released the song as a single in 1973 that charted internationally.
Original recording
Joni Mitchell wrote and released t ...
" that had kind of that riff. So we kind of borrowed that. And we made it into 'Barracuda'. And we saw the guys from Nazareth later and they were pissed. 'You took our riff!' But that's kind of what everybody—you borrow from what you love and then you make it your own. It's one of those sounds too, it's one of those guitar tones that I'm still trying to figure out what we did. aughsIt's hard to re-create."
Reception
"Barracuda" is a
hard rock
Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and Distortion (music), distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the Garage rock, garage, Psychedelic rock, psychedelic and blues ...
song incorporating elements of
psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a rock music Music genre, genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelia, psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound ...
. Upon the song's release, it became Heart's second top-20 entry in the United States, peaking at number 11 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, spending 20 weeks on the chart.
''
Cash Box
''Cashbox'', also known as ''Cash Box'', is an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as ''Cashbox Magazine'', an online ...
'' called it "an aggressive rocker, tempered with sparkling production and Ann Wilson's alluring lead vocal.." ''
Record World
''Record World'' magazine was one of three major weekly music industry trade magazines in the United States, with ''Billboard'' and '' Cashbox''. It was founded in 1946 as ''Music Vendor''. In 1964, it was changed to ''Record World'' under the ...
'' said that it is "tough, driving rock 'n' roll, topped by the Wilsons' evocative vocals."
Usage at the 2008 Republican National Convention
"Barracuda" was played at the
2008 Republican National Convention
The 2008 Republican National Convention took place at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from September 1, through September 4, 2008. The first day of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party's convention fell on Labo ...
in reference to
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American statesman and United States Navy, naval officer who represented the Arizona, state of Arizona in United States Congress, Congress for over 35 years, first as ...
's running mate,
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, and author who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nomi ...
, who claims she was known as "Sarah Barracuda" as a high school basketball star (and as "Sarracuda" after the convention, a play on her name). The Wilson sisters disapproved, as they disagreed with Palin's politics, and sent a
cease-and-desist
A cease and desist letter is a document sent by one party, often a business, to warn another party that they believe the other party is committing an unlawful act, such as copyright infringement, and that they will take legal action if the other ...
letter to John McCain's campaign, despite the McCain campaign's claim to have lawfully purchased rights to use the song.
In an appearance on a Seattle talk show, song co-writer and lead guitarist Roger Fisher announced he was thrilled with the RNC's use of the song, because it both resulted in royalties for the band and gave them an opportunity to publicly point out that he is a "staunch" supporter of
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
. Michael Derosier, a co-writer of the song and the band's drummer on the recording, also supports the use of the song by the RNC. The McCain campaign continued to use the song, despite Nancy Wilson's statement to ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...
'' that "Sarah Palin's views and values in no way represent us as American women."
Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of ''
Little Queen
''Little Queen'' is the third studio album by American rock band Heart, released in May 1977 by Portrait Records. The album was recorded and mixed at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle, Washington, from February to April 1977. On June 29, 2004, a r ...
''.
*
Ann Wilson
Ann Dustin Wilson (born June 19, 1950) is an American singer best known as the lead singer of the rock band Heart.
Wilson has been a member of Heart since the early 1970s; her younger sister, Nancy Wilson, is also a member of the band. One o ...
Howard Leese
Howard M. Leese (June 13, 1951) is an American guitarist, record producer, and musical director who played with Heart as guitarist and keyboardist for 23 years (1975 through 1998). He continues to record and tour as a solo artist, and as guitar ...
– rhythm guitar;
Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which causes a length of magnetic tape to contact a Capstan (tape recorder), capstan, which pulls i ...
*
Steve Fossen
Steve Fossen (born November 15, 1949) is an American bassist and a founding member of the band Heart (band), Heart.Five Per Cent for Nothing", 1971 Yes instrumental whose title disparages the band's former manager
*" Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to...)", 1975 Queen song which similarly disparages the band's former manager and record label