Five iconic musicians who wouldn’t be here without Stevie Nicks
No one can really prepare themselves for what Stevie Nicks sounds like when they first hear Fleetwood Mac.
Every single member of the band was an absolute monster when making albums like Rumours, but when you look at the way that Nicks approached all of her songs, it’s almost like watching a spirit listening to a spirit take over someone’s body for a few minutes when she starts singing ‘Landslide’. There’s only one person on Earth who can make songs that sound like that, but there are more than a few artists who have taken a page from her playbook as well.
Aside from being one of the most prominent female rockers of the 1970s, Nicks was the archetype for how someone could approach the love song from a different perspective. The Beatles might have exhausted a certain type of romance during their time together, but when you listen to every one of Nicks’s songs, it’s almost as if she’s writing a little novella across every one of her tunes, whether it’s talking about the tragedies in her life or the love gone sour on tunes like ‘Bella Donna’.
And some of the greatest artists of the next generation have followed suit whenever it comes to their tunes. While not every songwriter who has walked in Nicks’s footsteps has taken direct inspiration from her, you can see it in the way that they carry themselves, the way they talk about their craft, or just the feeling that they’re trying to evoke whenever they discuss their songs.
So while most people would be glad to consider Nicks a titan of the rock and roll industry, that kind of accolade doesn’t come from someone who’s trying to become a legend. It only comes when the next generation takes what you were doing and brings it to the next level, and there’s no shortage of artists who wouldn’t have been able to create their own tunes were it not for Nicks’s music.
Five musicians who wouldn’t be here without Stevie Nicks:
Beyoncé
So, before the stans come to kill me, it should be known that this one is a technicality in many ways.
Beyoncé is one of the single biggest stars in the world, and there’s a good chance that she would have reached that spot even without having Nicks’s help throughout her career. Then again, all great artists need to start somewhere, and getting the sample of ‘Bootylicious’ from ‘The Edge of Seventeen’ is still one of the most inspired choices in hip-hop history when you think about it.
Destiny’s Child was already white hot after songs like ‘Bills Bills Bills’ and ‘Say My Name’, but that stuttering guitar riff from the middle of Nicks’s mammoth smash is what drives their entire breakout song. Yes, Queen Bey does take things in a much different direction in their song, but if you have to give credit on the album, it’s only fair to give the same kind of credit to Nicks for helping lay the groundwork for a song like this.
And it turned out that it was a pretty good time for the public to get acquainted with Nicks as well, considering that Say You Will was just around the corner, and everyone was loving what they heard when listening back to the version of ‘Silver Springs’ that was taken from The Dance. So, really, this is the rare example where you see the next generation propping up their idols to a certain degree. Legends supporting legends; you love to see it.
HAIM
Nicks has never been afraid to talk about her favourite music that she’s hearing at the new school.
She loved the idea of people carrying on what she had started, but if you look at what’s going around in her playlists, there’s a good chance that not everyone who listened to The Weeknd like Nicks necessarily heard her influence across all of his records. The influence can be subtle when it wants to be, but HAIM feels like the kind of band that could have been her adopted children if they wanted to.
Half of their best songs feel like they are pulled directly from the same playbook that Nicks was using during her early days, from the raw emotion in their songs to the way their harmonies overlap. They were practically the 2010s version of ‘The Mac’ for a lot of people, but all of the sisters don’t have any interest in trying to be the second-rate version of one of the greatest bands of all time.
They were ready to carve out their own identity, and Nicks was more than happy to watch from the sidelines as they turned their sound inside out. Because if there’s one thing that any artist wants to see, it’s their proteges taking chances, and even if not everything HAIM does pans out perfectly, you can definitely feel that they’re making something from the heart the same way that Nicks was.
Sheryl Crow
Part of the appeal of Nicks’s solo career is seeing all of the people that she has been able to work with over the years. Her solo journey wasn’t something that she ever wanted to do completely alone, and sometimes the greatest artists that she worked with brought that extra bit of magic to the table on each of her tunes. But aside from other legends helping her out like Don Henley and Tom Petty, Sheryl Crow seemed to be the younger sister version of what Nicks was always supposed to be.
Crow may have hit her stride in the 1990s, but her debut is already full of the same kind of songwriting that Nicks was known for. And when she eventually made her turn towards straight-up pop music, she was always on hand to sing a duet with Nicks every now and again, whether that’s her contributing a song to one of ‘The Gold Dust Woman’s albums or channelling her vibe into her own material like ‘Everyday is a Winding Road’.
The partnership worked so well that Nicks even wanted to invite Crow to join her other band after Christine McVie left, but there was no sense in trying to mess with the chemistry there. Even if Crow had made an awesome inclusion to the band during her prime, she’s far more content to live outside of Nicks’s shadow and make the best music that she can and still reconnect with her friend on occasion.
Harry Styles
It’s hard to really nail down every single artist that Harry Styles is trying to emulate throughout his solo career. We can all look at him now as the Timberlake of One Direction who walked away with the biggest solo career, but looking through his records, there are moments that seem more reminiscent of people like Peter Gabriel than anything remotely current. That kind of vintage flavour suited his music perfectly, and that included having more than a few nods to Nicks’s songwriting every now and again.
While the idea of having Styles induct Nicks into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a bit of a strange choice, he actually seemed a lot more qualified than most other pop stars out right now. The beginnings of his musical journey were listening to his parents sing along to tunes like ‘Dreams’ when he was a child, and when he does turn on his rock and roll chops for a few songs, he actually does manage to pull off a decent Tom Petty when he turns up at her gigs to sing ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’.
And to be fair, Nicks has fully endorsed Styles many times over, even calling him the lovechild that she never actually had with Mick Fleetwood back in the day. He didn’t need to always be pulling from her playbook by any stretch, but if he still holds himself to the same standards that he talked about during her acceptance speech, he’s well on his way to being one of the greatest legends of the decade.
Taylor Swift
Come on, the Swifties know this to be true in their core. Taylor Swift might be one of the biggest stars in the world today all on her own, but despite creating an entire empire for herself, just look at the way that she constructs songs. From the openhearted honesty and her intimate way of talking about relationships, Swift is practically working off the same rules that Nicks set for herself before she even sang with Fleetwood Mac.
She didn’t have to have the same type of witchy flair that Nicks had every time she sang, but a lot of Swift’s more respected works do have the same kind of dramatic flair that you’d expect out of a Nicks production. Red may have been a great record thanks to her songwriting and even including a nod to Joni Mitchell’s album Blue, but Nicks was always keeping a watchful eye on what Swift was doing throughout every step of her musical journey.
And while Nicks’s history with her traces all the way back to the Grammys when they sang ‘Rhiannon’ together, she never forgot about that young woman who had started writing the story of her life in song. That was the same thing that she was hoping to do in all of her tunes, and since she’s still supportive of Swift’s creative decisions, it’s almost as if she has become the fun aunt for every single pop artist these days.
