"Allies" by Heart

Song#:  1668
Date:  10/29/1983
Debut:  93
Peak:  83
Weeks:  4
Genre:  Rock



Pop Bits:  Heart's first single from their album Passionworks, "How Can I Refuse?," just missed the Top 40 getting to #44. Although it did reach #1 at Rock, the miss at Pop wasn't a great start and they hoped to turn things around with this second single. Unfortunately, it did far worse spending a short month hanging around the bottom of the chart. In doing so, it made the album their first to not generate at least one Top 40 Pop single. To make matters worse, the song couldn't even get on the Rock chart. The poor performing singles hampered albums sales and the best it could do was a #39 showing - their worst charting album to-date. It would also serve as their final album for Epic. The band was struggling with the label over lack of promotion and other issues. After Passionworks, it was time for Heart to move on to something new.

ReduxReview:  This is one of those odd songs where the verse sections are better than the chorus. Not that the chorus is bad, but the arrangement and melody within the verses are so good that when the chorus comes in, it's a bit of a let down. There is a nice build up to the chorus, but once it hits there's not much of a payoff. I wanted something like build-build-build>big!-big!-big!-triumphant!, but instead it's like build-build-build>bigish-low-low-low-eh. Even the bridge hints at building to something great and then it fizzles. Again, not bad, I just wanted more. All-in-all, it's still a quality track from Heart.

ReduxRating:  6/10

Trivia:   This song was written by Journey member Jonathan Cain. He wrote the tune for possible inclusion on Journey's LP Frontiers and recorded a demo. Apparently, Cain wanted to sing the song himself instead of front-man Steve Perry, but that wasn't flying with Perry. So Cain came up with a duet version for him and Perry, but it just didn't work. The song ended up getting set aside and ignored until Heart came along and gave it their attention.

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