“It’s got a really great beat”: Stevie Nicks’ favourite songs from ‘Bella Donna’
In a 2021 Instagram post that revealed an excerpt from her personal journal, Stevie Nicks reflected on her debut solo album, Bella Donna, 40 years on from its release. She said, “I could not have been more proud of those songs or the three months it took me, the girls and Jimmy Iovine to craft it.” The girls here are Sharon Celani and Lori Perry-Nicks – the latter Nicks’ sister-in-law – on backing vocals, who the Fleetwood Mac vocalist and songwriter saw as her “girl version of Crosby, Stills & Nash”. Jimmy Iovine produced the 1981 album.
Nicks was 33 when she released Bella Donna, having three Fleetwood Mac albums under her belt – namely their self-titled in 1975 which saw the arrival of Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham to the band, Rumours and Tusk – not to mention her earlier work with duo project Buckingham Nicks.
With Nicks having penned some of Fleetwood Mac’s most defining tracks, including ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Gypsy’, ‘Silver Springs’ and ‘Dreams’, there was no doubt her own solo work would be anything less than stellar. And if this songwriting prowess wasn’t enough, Nicks is a vocal powerhouse and storyteller in equal measure.
According to Nicks, the title track from Bella Donna was written “about my boyfriend’s mother who was involved with a man in Chile during the coup that happened there in 1973.” Nicks went on to explain that the man was banished to France. “Banished or imprisoned, that was the choice. The love story never really ended – but she never saw him again.” Nicks was so touched by this story of lost love that she wrote ‘Bella Donna’. “The moment the poem and then the song was finished, I knew I had the basis for my first solo record.”
Track six on the album, the anthemic and timeless ‘Edge of Seventeen’ is a big favourite among fans – just as it is with Nicks herself. With a distinctive 16th note guitar riff, instantly recognisable the second you hit play, the track’s subject matter is one of utter grief – Nicks’ charged vocal sings of the loss she felt following the death of both John Lennon and her uncle Jonathan.
The white-winged dove referenced and emulated in the “whoo, whoo, whoo” supported by her backing vocalists serves to symbolise the soul leaving the body after death – “the white dove was John Lennon, and peace,” she said. “That was a very scary and sad moment for all of us in the rock and roll business, it scared us all to death that some idiot could be so deranged that he would wait outside your apartment building, never having known you, and shoot you dead,” she told Entertainment Weekly.
The next track on the album, ‘How Still My Love’, is coincidently Nicks’s second favourite pick from the ten-track collection. “It’s kind of woozy, and it’s slow, but it’s got a really great beat – kind of a striptease, a little burlesque, a little Dita Von Teese-y,” she said, having overcome somewhat of a musical challenge in embracing seduction whilst writing this track. “I really don’t write extremely sexual songs, never have. I’m always going to write about the bouquets and the flowers.”
Since taking the formidable step into the solo spotlight, Stevie Nicks has released eight solo albums, with not only her debut reaching platinum status but several others, namely The Wild Heart (1983), Rock a Little (1985), and The Other Side of the Mirror (1989).
