The music that Stevie Nicks grew up singing
Stevie Nicks may have found her success in the world of soft-rock through her role as the wondrously witchy frontwoman of Fleetwood Mac, but she has never allowed herself to be contained to one genre. Long before she joined Mick Fleetwood’s band of pop-rockers, she experimented with folk and psychedelic influences in her early bands, and she even learned to sing through the lens of R&B.
Unlike many budding musicians, Nicks didn’t learn to sing from her family’s listening habits. She didn’t grow up singing along to her parents’ favourite tunes, and she wasn’t taken in by the country vocals of her grandfather, even though they often sang together. Instead, Nicks found herself more pulled to a slightly cooler sound: the R&B stylings that she heard on the radio.
“I learned to sing with R&B music,” Nicks divulged during an appearance at the Hamptons International Film Festival when asked if she’d ever consider putting out an R&B album, “Even though I had a country-singing grandfather.” As she recalled, Nicks would sit in the backseat singing along to R&B girl groups, prompting confusion from her parents. “I’m really not going country,” she would respond to their disbelief, “I’m really going R&B.”
Despite the youthful determination in her phrasing, Nicks’ stylistic interests would change as she grew up and looked to turn her backseat singalongs into a tangible music career. She was right in saying that she wouldn’t go to the country, but she wouldn’t go to R&B either. Instead, she ventured into a slightly different guitar realm as she linked up with Lindsey Buckingham, who would become her short-term romantic partner and long-term co-songwriter.
Together, the pair pushed into folk-rock as Buckingham Nicks, though they never found the success they were looking for as a duo. That triumph only came when they stumbled upon Fleetwood, who invited them to fall further into their pop-rock leanings with Fleetwood Mac. From the wispy ‘Dreams’ to the formidable ‘The Chain’, Nicks would lend her voice and her songwriting prowess to some of the band’s biggest hits, forging soft-rock as we know it.
Nicks may have cemented her place in rock history, but she never lost her love for her R&B roots. Without them, she would have never found her passion for singing in the first place. In fact, Nicks seemed enthusiastic at the concept of delving further into the genre, stating that it had “always been a dream” to create an R&B record. That dream is yet to come to fruition, though Nicks has spent the last decade or so expanding her horizons musically.
She’s worked with straight-up pop artists like Maroon 5 and Miley Cyrus, linked up with Lana Del Rey, and even appeared on a Gorillaz track. The star even hinted at a collaboration she had in the works with Babyface, suggesting that he wanted the pair to write together. Unfortunately, fans of Nicks are still left longing for her first recorded R&B endeavour.
With her long-standing love for the sound and her powerful vocal style, the Fleetwood Mac singer would almost certainly nail the genre if she tried her hand at it. For now, though, we’re left to imagine what an R&B record by Nicks might sound like.
