Heart - Break

JUL 01 1980 · 12:00

Heart - Break (1980) Director: Paul Smith Era: Classic Rock Era / MTV Dawn (1980) - Pre-MTV promotional clip from the year MTV launched; Heart at their hardest-rocking, most defiant, transitioning from late-70s folk-rock toward stripped-down hard rock on the Bébé le Strange album cycle. This is a rare and historically significant pre-MTV promotional clip for one of the most critically regarded albums of Heart's classic period. As a 1980 performance film directed by Paul Smith, who also directed Heart's 'Even It Up' clip that year, it provides a direct visual document of the band's hard rock identity during a transitional moment in both the band's history and the music industry's adoption of the promotional video format. Its fast editing, warm film-stock aesthetics, and performance-focused structure make it a valuable reference artifact for the study of pre-cable rock promotional filmmaking. Context: Released in 1980 on Bébé le Strange (Epic Records), 'Break' captures Heart at a pivotal artistic crossroads. The album was the band's first without founding guitarist Roger Fisher and was recorded amid significant personal upheaval for the Wilson sisters. The track, penned by Ann Wilson, is among the album's most viscerally hard-rocking moments, reflecting the band's stripped-down, Telecaster-driven brashness on what many fans consider the final record of their classic era. The promotional video predates MTV by over a year, placing it squarely in the tradition of pre-cable promotional film clips distributed to TV variety programs. Bébé le Strange peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, affirming Heart's commercial vitality at the dawn of a new decade despite the internal turbulence that would eventually stall their momentum before their massive mid-1980s resurgence. Director notes: Paul Smith directed both the 'Break' and 'Even It Up' promotional music videos for Heart in 1980, situating this clip within a pair of same-era promotional films for the Bébé le Strange album cycle. The video was produced as a promotional clip prior to the widespread adoption of MTV (which launched August 1, 1981), placing it firmly in the pre-MTV promotional film tradition. The IMDb listing confirms the video's 1980 release date and the full band lineup including Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Howard Leese, Steve Fossen, and Michael DeRosier.