Stevie Nicks picks her 10 favourite songs of all time
Stevie Nicks and her former partner Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in the mid-1970s and helped re-establish the transatlantic group as a pop-rock sensation. The pair first met during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. Nicks was out one night at the Young Life Club, where she beheld Buckingham playing a cover of Barry McGuire’s ‘California Dreamin”, and she decided to join him in harmony.
Nicks and Buckingham left home to study at San José State University, but both would subsequently drop out to follow their passion for music with their humble beginnings in the psychedelic rock band Fritz. When Fritz disbanded in 1972, Buckingham and Nicks rolled the dice as a duo and released Buckingham Nicks, an album that received less commercial attention and praise than it perhaps deserved.
In late 1972, Buckingham joined the Everly Brothers on tour to play the guitar. Meanwhile, Nicks took to her notepad and penned two of her most enduring classics, ‘Rhiannon’ and ‘Landslide’. The latter was written about her relationship with Buckingham, which was, at the time, descending into the first of many subsequent troughs.
In 1974, producer Keith Olsen introduced the pair to drummer Mick Fleetwood. Fleetwood initially invited just Buckingham to the band, as they required a versatile guitarist. A loyal Buckingham stalled the recruitment process, insisting he comes only as a package deal with Nicks. Mick duly accepted, agreeing that another singer-songwriter wouldn’t hurt. As it transpired, Mick couldn’t have made a better decision. In 1975, the self-titled album Fleetwood Mac would become the band’s most commercially successful to date, bolstered by Nick’s songs’ Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’. The rest is history, as you might say.
In 2011, Nicks was invited to partake in BBC Radio 2’s ‘Tracks of My Years’ feature while promoting her album, In Your Dreams. For her introductory selection, Nicks chose Eagles’ 1972 song, ‘Witchy Woman’. “The Eagles were famous before Lindsey and I moved to Los Angeles,” Nicks said, introducing the song. “We drove to LA, and I remember listening to that song, thinking what a great song it was, and of course, I’m sure as all women my age did at that point, we were all hoping that we would actually be the witchy woman. Premonition-wise I would come to know Don Henley quite well. In fact, even do know who the actual witchy woman was; it was someone who became a very famous jeweller.”
“The Eagles were very inspirational to both Lindsey and I because we loved their singing, and we loved their ability to bridge country and rock and roll so beautifully,” she added. “I thought ‘Witchy Woman’ was just the perfect mix of country and rock and roll. And so we were very inspired by that, Lindsey and I.”
Next up, Nicks gave a shout-out to Kate Bush, a contemporary female singer-songwriter of whom she was particularly in awe. Announcing Bush’s seminal 1985 hit ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’, Nicks said: “That song I really loved because, what a great writer she is, and ‘Running Up That Hill’ was one of those songs that, when I first heard it, I went, ‘Oh I wanna record that song someday.’ As writers, we do that whenever a song comes on the radio that we love, we say, ‘Oh, I wanna record it and reinterpret it.’ Every once in a while, we do it, but you finally smarten up and go, ‘I can’t really do that song better than Kate Bush did, so I’m not gonna do it.’ Because if you can’t outdo her, then don’t bother”.
“And I just really loved her because she was a woman songwriter, and she was really standing out from the fray… a real serious writer who could compare with any of the guys. And then you’d see her in her videos, she’s kind of like a ninja. So she was tough, and yet she was a beautiful dancer. And she wrote beautiful songs. She wrote interesting, on-the-edge songs. As a writer, I really respected her because of that.”
Later in the interview, Nicks revealed an eclectic taste spanning the ages, with selections from Jackson Browne to Justin Timberlake. See the full list of Nicks’ selections below and follow our Spotify playlist if you like what you see.
Stevie Nicks’ 10 favourite songs:
- Eagles – ‘Witchy Woman’
- Kate Bush – ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’
- Dan Fogelberg – ‘Same Old Lang Syne’
- Pat Benetar – ‘Love Is A Battlefield’
- Jackson Browne – ‘Somebody’s Baby’
- Chicago – ‘Hard Habit To Break’
- The Beach Boys – ‘Sail On, Sailor’
- Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers – ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’
- Vanessa Carlton – ‘A Thousand Miles’
- Justin Timberlake – ‘Cry Me A River’
