There is more than one artist with this name:

1) Nancy Sue Wilson - … Read Full Bio ↴There is more than one artist with this name:

1) Nancy Sue Wilson - jazz diva best known for her 60s standards recordings.

2) Nancy Lamoureaux Wilson - singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and member of the group Heart.

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1) Nancy Sue Wilson (born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, OH, United States – December 13, 2018, in Pioneertown, CA, United States) was a jazz diva famous for recording American standards in the 60s.

She was among contemporary music's most stylish and sultry vocalists; while often crossing over into the pop and R&B markets -- and even hosting her own television variety program -- she remained best known as a jazz performer, renowned for her work alongside figures including Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing. Wilson first attracted notice performing the club circuit in nearby Columbus; she quickly earned a growing reputation among jazz players and fans, and she was recording regularly by the late '50s, eventually signing to Capitol and issuing LPs including 1959's Like in Love and Nancy Wilson with Billy May's Orchestra. Her dates with Shearing, including 1960's The Swingin's Mutual, solidified her standing as a talent on the rise, and her subsequent work with Adderley -- arguably her finest recordings -- further cemented her growing fame and reputation.

In the years to follow, however, Wilson often moved away from jazz, much to the chagrin of purists; she made numerous albums, many of them properly categorized as pop and R&B outings, and toured extensively, appearing with everyone from Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan to Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. She even hosted her own Emmy-winning variety series for NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show, and was a frequent guest performer on other programs; hits of the period included "Tell Me the Truth," "How Glad I Am," "Peace of Mind," and "Now, I'm a Woman." Regardless of how far afield she traveled, Wilson always maintained her connections to the jazz world, and in the 1980s, she returned to the music with a vengeance, working closely with performers including Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Ramsey Lewis, and Benny Golson. By the 1990s, she was a favorite among the "new adult contemporary" market, her style ideally suited to the format's penchant for lush, romantic ballads; she also hosted the Jazz Profiles series on National Public Radio.

In the early 2000s, Wilson recorded two albums with Ramsey Lewis for Narada (2002's Meant to Be and 2003's Simple Pleasures). Her 2004 album R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) was a blend of straight-ahead jazz and ballads, similar to her next record, 2006's Turned to Blue, which, like R.S.V.P., used a different instrumentalist for each track. In 2005, Capitol released a three-part series to pay tribute to Wilson's contributions to music in the '50s and '60s: Guess Who I Saw Today: Nancy Wilson Sings Songs of Lost Love, Save Your Love for Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads, and The Great American Songbook.

Wilson died from a long-illness on December 13, 2018 at her home in Pioneertown, California at the age of 81.

2) Nancy Lamoureux Wilson (born March 16, 1954, San Francisco, CA, United States), more popularly known as Nancy Wilson, is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter. Along with her older sister Ann Wilson, she is part of the Seattle/Vancouver rock band Heart. She is married to film director and screenwriter Cameron Crowe and has composed and performed music for most of Crowe's movies, including Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, and Elizabethtown.

While Ann is the lead singer on most of the Heart recordings, Nancy is the lead vocalist on Treat Me Well, These Dreams, Stranded, There's the Girl and Will You Be There (In The Morning), and frequently performs background vocals. She is also the band's rhythm and lead guitarist. In 1999, she released a live solo album, Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop.

Solo albums
1999 - Live At McCabes Guitar Shop
2005 - Elizabethtown
2009 - Baby Guitars
2016 - Undercover Guitar (with Julie Bergman)
2021 - You and Me

But Beautiful
Nancy Wilson Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Love is funny or it's sad,
Or it's quiet or it's mad,
It's a good thing or it's bad,
But beautiful!

Beautiful to take a chance
And if you fall, you fall,
And I'm thinking I wouldn't mind at all.

Love is tearful or it's gay.
It's a problem or it's play,
It's a heartache either way,
But beautiful!

And I'm thinking if you were mine

I'd never let you go,
And that would be but beautiful I know.

Overall Meaning

The first stanza of Nancy Wilson's song "But Beautiful" is a profound reflection on love's contrasting nature. Love is neither all good nor all bad, it comes with both high and low points. Sometimes it can leave you laughing with joy while at other times, it can leave you teary-eyed and sad. The song suggests that love can be a risk worth taking, just like diving headfirst off a cliff. It can either set you soaring or leave you crashing to the ground, but the prospect of the experience is beautiful. The phrase "But beautiful" in the chorus acknowledges that love is a multifaceted experience.

The second stanza asserts that love is unpredictable. It can playfully lift you up or become an agonizing weight in your heart, but it remains beautiful. The singer expresses a deep desire to win the affection of the person she is addressing. She imagines a world in which she would never let go of the one she loves if that person were hers. The expression "But beautiful I know," suggests that the experience of love would indeed be challenging, but it would always be worth it.

Line by Line Meaning

Love is funny or it's sad,
Love can bring joy or sorrow

Or it's quiet or it's mad,
Love can be calm or intense

It's a good thing or it's bad,
Love can be positive or negative

But beautiful!
Regardless of its nature, love is beautiful.

Beautiful to take a chance
It's beautiful to take risks in love

And if you fall, you fall,
Accepting the consequences of love is part of its beauty

And I'm thinking I wouldn't mind at all.
The singer is willing to take such risks in her love life

Love is tearful or it's gay.
Love can cause both sadness and happiness

It's a problem or it's play,
Love can be both a challenge and a source of fun

It's a heartache either way,
Love can cause pain no matter what

But beautiful!
But love is still beautiful despite its complexities