The changing landscape of Stevie Nicks’ ‘Edge of Seventeen’: “Oh I went searching for an answer”
It’s normal for a song’s meaning to change over time. Just ask Stevie Nicks, whose megahit ‘Edge of Seventeen’ somehow morphed into a rumination on war violence.
The first flavours of what would eventually become ‘Edge of Seventeen’ came from Nicks’ personal experiences with grief. She’d lost her uncle around the same time the world lost John Lennon, which caused her to really look at what, exactly, it felt like to process loss when it becomes all-consuming and impossible to avoid.
The “white-winged dove” initially symbolised Lennon, whose death she once said was completely “unacceptable” in the rock world. Transforming Lennon into such a symbol immediately turned him into something with peace associations, both in the sense that his death had been so violent and unexpected, and that through his passing, he could finally leave behind the chaotic world within which he’d been trying to find spiritual relief and belonging for so long.
There’s a sense of anger there, too, as is a usual aspect of grief. For instance, when Nicks talks about the fact that nothing else matters, searching for an answer that’s there, or even the way her voice naturally carries a quality of vehemence, it’s clear she’s singing from the kind of despair that’s also determined to regain control and power – another natural facet of grief.
Over the years, however, the song’s meaning shifted for Nicks, changing from an empowering rumination on grief to a lamentation of war violence. Both meanings share similar associations and sonic features, proving the fine line that exists between both concepts, especially when the fast-paced rhythm throughout naturally already sounds like a battle march and someone preparing to face some kind of force of evil.
But instead of the original theme of loss, the sense of “foreboding” also evokes the ideal atmosphere for people who have seen firsthand the constant fears of waiting around during wartime. As Nicks explained to Entertainment Weekly, “Now, for me, it has taken on something else. I feel like I hear war, because I go to visit soldiers in Bethesda and at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center], and when I hear their stories.”
“We can’t even imagine what they’re going through, the violence,” she continued, “So when I sing, “Flood of tears that no one ever really heard fall at all / Oh I went searching for an answer, up the stairs and down the hall.” The “call of the nightbird” is death, and I think of them in the desert, coming around corners, the fear, waiting to be ambushed. It’s very foreboding, ominous.”
It’s easy to read the entire song that way, beyond the obvious imagery within the lyrics Nicks calls attention to. For instance, there’s that sense of foreboding she mentioned, not just in the way the arrangements command attention but with the lyrics that play into waiting for something bad to happen. When she sings, “And the days go by like a strand in the wind / In the web that is my own, I begin again,” Nicks addresses the lonely and isolating nature of being in a constant cycle of fear.
And when she says, “The clouds never expect it when it rains / But the sea changes colour / But the sea does not change,” while talking about going forth with “an age-old desire to please”, Nicks’ character in the song is 17, a young age to be subjected to so much trauma. And yet, through epiphanies about change and growth, she addresses the need to plaster on a face of maturity to be able to get the job done.
These can, of course, still be applied to grief. Sometimes, when you’re in the throes of it, it can feel like preparing for battle. But that also proves Nicks’ knack for clever wordplay, and her ability to talk about something everyone will relate to but with lyrical precision. The meaning might shift again, but it’ll always hold a sense of motivated anguish.
