“I couldn’t today”: The album Stevie Nicks thought she could never write again
As one of the leading lyricists for soft-rockers Fleetwood Mac and a formidable solo artist in her own right, Stevie Nicks has contributed her talents to some truly iconic albums over the years. From Rumours to Bella Donna, the witchy wordsmith has consistently turned vinyl into solid gold, sharing her powerful vocals and entrancing tales with the world over soft strums and gentle drums.
The power of Nicks’ songwriting has often stemmed from its emotional drive, from the way she weaves in stories of her own struggles with love and with life into striking soft-rock hits. Rumours is perhaps the finest example of this. Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 magnum opus was driven by the drug use and divorce that characterised the band members’ lives behind-the-scenes, and Nicks was no exception.
She wrote unabashedly about her break-up with Lindsey Buckingham, who had been her partner in both romance and songwriting for years prior. Borrowing generously from her own life, Nicks contributed some of the most affecting songs on the album, including the gorgeous ‘Dreams’ and the blistering cut track, ‘Silver Springs’.
Rumours isn’t the only album that has been infused with the light and life of Stevie Nicks. Her solo records have been just as full of intent, with tracks like ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and, much more recently, ‘The Lighthouse’, containing Nicks’ distinctively raw songwriting. Each and every song she has penned is full of her own emotions and experiences, which can make replication difficult.
In fact, there is one album that Nicks herself doesn’t believe she could replicate. Just over a decade ago, in the autumn of 2014, the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman released 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, a collection of tracks from further back in Nicks’ career. Accordingly, the songs were inspired by experiences from throughout her life, including many of her most significant romantic endeavours.
During a conversation with Maclean’s, Nicks spoke about the record, which she described as “the glory songs.” Due to the nature of the record, the former Fleetwood Mac singer believed that she couldn’t make 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault again. “I couldn’t write that album today,” she admitted, explaining that the songs were born from her greatest love stories.
Perhaps the likes of Buckingham, who had a huge impact on Nicks’ life both in her career and in romance, and Joe Walsh, who she considered to be the love of her life, may have been amongst the inspirations for the record. “None of those songs were written after a one-night stand because there weren’t very many of those in my life,” she explained, “Those are all about relationships that lasted. All my relationships lasted.”
Although Nicks’ comments referred specifically to 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, which collated those romantically-driven songs from throughout her career, it’s easy to apply her words to her wider career. Almost all of Nicks’ writings seem to be inspired by her own experiences and emotions, driven by lust or anger or love, and it would be hard to replicate them when you have been removed from the throes of those feelings.
This is exactly what makes Nicks’ writing so great, so universally affecting and influential. It’s easy to feel the emotions that Nicks was going through while writing, which lends Fleetwood Mac and her solo work so much of its power.
