The Wild Heart (album)

The Wild Heart is an album by American Fleetwood Mac vocalist, Stevie Nicks. Released on June 10, 1983, a year after Fleetwood Mac's #1 album, Mirage, it reached #5 on the U.S. Billboard 200 charts and achieved platinum status on September 12, 1983. It achieved double platinum status in 1993, ten years after its released, for shipping 2,000,000 copies in the U.S. It was also certified silver in UK for sales 60,000.

Recording began in late 1982, shortly after Fleetwood Mac's Mirage tour. After the death of her best friend, Robin Anderson, and with a new appreciation of her life and career, the recording only took a few months and the album was released in June 1983, preceded by the single "Stand Back," to much critical acclaim.

The album is notable for its array of prominent guest musicians. Tom Petty made a return to write "I Will Run to You", on which his bandmates from the Heartbreakers performed. Nicks' Fleetwood  Mac bandmate, drummer Mick Fleetwood, made an appearance on the track "Sable on Blond". Toto's Steve Lukather contributed some of the guitar work on what would become the album's biggest hit single, "Stand Back" (#5), which also features an uncredited contribution from Prince, who played the synthesizer track. Nicks also worked with friend Sandy Stewart, who wrote the music for three tracks on the album and performed on several (Stewart would go on to write the 1987 Fleetwood Mac hit "Seven Wonders"). The album's final track, "Beauty and the Beast", features a full string section.

The set produced three Top 40 singles in "Stand Back" (#5), "If Anyone Falls" (#14) and "Nightbird" (#33). The first two singles featured accompanying videos that went into heavy rotation on MTV. "Nightbird", a track Nicks told MTV was her favorite on the album, was performed live on "Solid Gold" and "Saturday Night Live".