“One of the best”: the pop album Stevie Nicks can’t stop listening to
The entire world is gulping the Harry Styles Kool-Aid, as he parades his fourth album across the world and cements his position as the biggest pop star of his age.
Good on the bloke, I think. It would be wrong and completely transparent of me to outright criticise the guy for squeezing every drop of exposure he’s afforded himself, for the jealousy of his life over mine would probably ring through every word. But do I think the hysteria over this fourth album has gone a little too far? Why, yes, I do.
The style has begun to overrun the substance with this latest album, and while the rest of the world is eulogising whatever act of everyday behaviour he performs next, the harsh reality that the music simply isn’t up to scratch has faded off into the ether.
But I can’t criticise the world for doing so, when they’re being led into delusional breaches by entertainment’s elite. Not only has Styles charmed us, mere mortals, into submission, but on this most recent album, it seems that esteemed artists are queuing up to offer their brown-nosed two pence wherever possible.
Like us, Styles is a lover of classic rock’s wild history. In fact, he’s made no secret of it, particularly in his music, wearing the influences of yesteryear’s greats on his sleeve with the best music of his doffing the cap and the very worst outrightly putting on its outfit. But of all the bands he treasures most, it seems as though Fleetwood Mac sit at the very top of the pile.
So somewhere along that realisation, the Fleetwood Mac members joined the rest of the world in a state of Styles adoration, to a recent point where every single time Stevie Nicks toured the UK and played her iconic hit ‘Landslide’, Styles would join her on stage.
As aforementioned, good on the bloke, I think I would do the same. Maybe once. But thereafter, I would probably leave Nicks to perform a song that is so desperately beautiful when done on her own and stop exercising my own desires.
But Nicks doesn’t mind because she has reciprocated the admiration and boldly claimed one of Styles’ albums to be the very best ever. She claimed, “I am also listening to Harry Styles these days. I think his Fine Line album is one of the best albums of all time. He was ready to go into rehearsal before this pandemic started. It’s okay, though, because Fine Line is such a ‘fine’ album,” she said, tailing off with a sweet laugh.
Well, amidst my what I considered to be transparent criticism of the world’s biggest current music artist, I have found myself questioning, how can you argue with that? That’s as good a baton pass as you’re ever likely to see: Nicks, who laid down one of the greatest albums of all time in Rumours, allowing a contemporary pop album into the club with her. Nevertheless, I still like to blame the Kool-Aid.
