The argument that made Stevie Nicks stop writing with Lindsey Buckingham
For Stevie Nicks, graduating from singer to poetic storyteller wasn’t always about what she was trying to say, but how she said it. “Learning to phrase when you’re a poet is hard,” she once said, saying that it was Joni Mitchell who taught her the principle of saying “thousands of words” in a song, “If you sing it right.”
It’s something that every writer encounters at some point, sometimes every single time they put pen to paper. If you have a good point or premise to explore, almost everything comes down to the phrasing. And then sometimes tense can be an issue, or committing to third person, and if that changes, is that indicative of messy stylistic choices or an endearing human touch?
For poets like Nicks and everyone she idolises, like Mitchell, Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the wording is often the difference between boring recollections and lines that venture bone-deep. A line like, “Take your silver spoon, dig your grave” hits much harder than something like, “cocaine will kill you”. Just like, “You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you” feels a lot more cutting than, “You’ll always think about me and it’ll piss you off forever”.
But these are the differences that also make Nicks one of a kind. Her words are her diary, and most are more poetic than anybody could ever match, not just in the more obvious cases like ‘Gold Dust Woman’ and ‘Silver Springs’ but often in the directness of her remarks, too. Her words can often be both lovelorn and euphoric, sometimes at the same time, highlighting her ability to look at life through multiple lenses because she’s truly lived it all.
However, Nicks hasn’t always had it easy, especially not when it comes to getting others to believe in her craft as much as she does. Granted, she’s had her share of impostor syndrome, but working alongside Lindsey Buckingham often introduced different challenges that made her feel lesser than when it came to her lyrical and poetic ability. And while often this saw Buckingham trying to improve what she’d written, Nicks didn’t always appreciate the condescension.
It’s like when you work on a project with a friend or colleague who thinks they know better: you know what you’re trying to achieve and believe in your means to get it right, but every so often it’ll feel like there’s some kind of shadow hanging over you, distracting you from what you want to do. For Nicks, this manifested in Buckingham’s incessant need to pick apart her phrasing like she wasn’t already one of the best in the class.
“Every once in a while, Lindsey will say, ‘You’re writing in the third person and then all of a sudden you flip back into first person, and you can’t really do that,'” Nicks recalled, continuing, “And I’m like, ‘Would you say that to Bob Dylan?’ I snap back at him. And that’s why Lindsey and I don’t write songs together. He’ll say, ‘No, well I guess, no.’ So that ends that conversation right there.”
As a writer, especially in music but also in countless other scenarios, these are the things that become blockers if you allow them to be: sometimes, it’s not about being the most polished with words that makes things seem poetic but the messiness in between, like addressing someone one moment and then turning it back the next. This is also what creates layering and the potential for multiple perspectives, and Nicks has always been the ultimate leader when it comes to unexpectedly beautiful wordplay.
