Heart / Little Queen / 1977
Kick It Out
restless, feral, exultant
Heart casts a wild, ungovernable woman as an engine of pure momentum, fusing horse imagery and hot-rod slang into one continuous metaphor for reckless vitality. The song doesn't build a plot so much as circle a single command—live at full throttle before you can't—repeated until it becomes a mantra.
untamed femininity freedom vs. containment mortality and urgency rebellion against small-town norms physical release
Who's speaking
A third-person narrator observes and reports the woman's exploits, but the chorus shifts into her own voice giving the imperative directly, blurring narrator and subject into one shared adrenaline.
What happens
The song opens with the woman breaking loose in a school zone, already marked as unruly and out of place. It moves her through a seaside bar and a beach where sailors watch her run, each scene reinforcing that she's untouchable and always in motion. By the final verses she's fully mythologized—part horse, part force of nature—needing someone who can match her intensity without trying to tame her. The chorus, repeated with increasing fervor, becomes less a scene than a standing order to keep moving.
How it's built
Loose verse-chorus form built for propulsion rather than narrative arc: short vignette verses feed into a chorus that expands with each return, eventually swallowing the song's back half in pure vamping and ad-libbed exhortation. The lack of a bridge or turn reflects the song's insistence on constant forward motion rather than reflection.
Section by section
Opening verse
The woman is introduced already breaking rules, born loose and speeding through forbidden space; the school zone detail plants her transgression within ordinary, regulated life, making her wildness feel dangerous rather than merely playful.a
First chorus
“kick out your motor and drive”
The horse/street-racing metaphor collapses into mechanical language, suggesting the woman's body and a machine's engine are interchangeable expressions of raw drive. The command to act while alive introduces the song's underlying mortality anxiety beneath its party surface.
Seaside verse
The scene shifts to leisure and desire, with onlookers unable to catch her; this reinforces her role as spectacle and unattainable object, admired but never possessed.
Mane/rider verse
“a bareback rider won't give her”
The horse imagery peaks here, framing companionship as a challenge to endure her intensity without controlling it. The refusal to 'give' pain reads ambiguously—either mercy or a demand for equal ferocity—leaving the power dynamic unresolved.
Extended outro chorus
The song abandons narrative entirely, dissolving into repeated commands and vocal ad-libs. This structural choice mirrors its theme: form gives way to unchecked momentum, ending not with resolution but with the mantra still running.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- The woman is consistently figured as an unbroken horse—loose, maned, needing a 'bareback rider'—which fuses animal wildness with sexual and existential freedom.
- imperative mood
- The chorus is delivered as direct command, turning the song from description into exhortation, addressed both to the woman and, by extension, to the listener.
- anaphora
- Repeated instructions to 'kick it out' and drive while still alive create a chant-like insistence that mimics the accelerating, unstoppable energy being described.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a celebration of unrestrained vitality, using the runaway horse and hot-rod images interchangeably to describe a woman who refuses domestication in any form—romantic, social, or physical. The 'while you're still alive' refrain suggests urgency born from awareness of mortality, turning what could be simple party rock into a small existential dare. An alternative reading hears it as a wry commentary on how such women get mythologized by onlookers (sailors, narrators) who admire from a safe distance without ever truly engaging her—freedom rendered as spectacle rather than lived experience.
Context
Little Queen (1977) followed Heart's breakthrough Dreamboat Annie and continued the band's interest in mixing hard rock muscle with mythic, sometimes horse-and-nature imagery (echoed in the title track and elsewhere on the album). I don't have confirmed biographical detail on the song's specific writing circumstances, so this reading is based on the lyric text itself.
Listen for
- The way the chorus escalates in repetition and ad-lib intensity toward the song's end
- How horse imagery and driving/mechanical imagery are used almost interchangeably
- The tension between admiration and distance in how onlookers are described
- Rhythmic drive in the vocal delivery that mimics the 'kick it out' command itself
About Heart
Heart is an American rock band formed in 1974 in the Pacific Northwest. The band evolved from previous projects led by the founding members Roger Fisher (guitar) and Steve Fossen, including the Army (1967–1969), Hocus Pocus (1969–1970), and White Heart (1970–1973).
1973 - present / United States
Full biography and catalogue