‘Help!’: The album that made Stevie Nicks want to write songs
The art of songwriting isn’t a skill a person is born with. It’s about trying to improve over time and making music with a stern message, and it usually takes people years before they have finally found a way to write songs that work for them. While Stevie Nicks was always going to be a songwriter from the moment she picked up a guitar, she didn’t get the right guidance until she heard The Beatles for the first time.
Throughout most of her time in the spotlight, half of Nicks’ greatest songs have always been about relationships. Whether it was the heartfelt music she made throughout her solo career or the sour side of love that populated most of Rumours, nothing was off the table with Nicks as long as she could shroud it with a melody behind everything.
For anyone looking to write love songs, though, The Beatles are practically ground zero. There had been rock songwriters who wrote love ballads before them, like Buddy Holly, but Nicks knew that she found something she could identify with when listening to the album Help!. Aside from being the soundtrack of the movie of the same name, this was the most open-hearted set of songs the band had released yet.
They had been going through Beatlemania and were clearly weary by Beatles for Sale, but hearing Lennon’s songs like ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ was about more than just puppy love. This was about what happens when the rest of the world isn’t ready for that kind of commitment.
Even Harrison’s first stabs at songwriting were a far cry from efforts like ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. While ‘You Like Me Too Much’ may be considered a bit of filler, ‘I Need You’ might be the most depressing song the Fab Four had written then, with Harrison pleading with his lover not to leave him for another.
Whereas most saw a decent movie soundtrack, Nicks saw a guide to writing her own melodic confessions, telling Rolling Stone, “Listening to Help! was like having these wise elders – who weren’t that much older than me – giving you all the information about what love is. It was like having four great teachers showing you how to write songs”.
While The Beatles would venture even further into mature territory on Rubber Soul, a lot of the trails they blazed on the album before are still part of the way Nicks writes songs to this day. By keeping everything fairly universal, that kind of balance between sincere and heartbroken on half the track listing is the reason why Nicks’ songs work so well, especially her more tragic love songs like ‘Edge of Seventeen’ or ‘Landslide’.
Granted, any artist who has ever tried emulating The Beatles has come away as a better songwriter for it. They weren’t looking to be the greatest songwriters in the world, and they might not have seen everything they did as great, but if you study what they did by blending their music and lyrics, you will probably crack the code on why so many people see them as towering musical gods today.
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