“I really love him”: The artist Stevie Nicks called one of the finest songwriters
In the modern age, the idea of songwriting can start to feel like a musical anomaly. Some people like to see the entire songwriting process as more of a workshop for musicians than telling their audience a story, and while there’s certainly merit to that collaborative approach, some of the personality gets lost when trying to make every listener feel something in between the notes. Collaboration might be the key to all great music, but Stevie Nicks has never been known to compromise any of her lyrics whenever she sat down with a song.
Throughout her career, Nicks often considered herself a great songwriter rather than the greatest musician. She was never going to play piano like Elton John or strap on a guitar like George Harrison, but it didn’t matter as long as she had a song in her heart when seeing tunes like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Sara’. It was never that hard to get the chords down, but her tunes relied more on emotion than being technical masterpieces.
While that most likely pissed off Lindsey Buckingham to no end, it was always done for the betterment of every Fleetwood Mac song. Buckingham could spend hours trying to get the right guitar sound for a tune like ‘Never Going Back Again’, but listening to the deep cut ‘Silver Springs’, the genius behind the track is because of the attitude it brings across. Not everything is played absolutely perfectly, but the heart of the song is fantastic.
As time has passed, though, many artists have been able to combine both sides of the musical spectrum. It’s not easy for someone to open up and be honest in their songs and yet still have pieces of ear candy for the music nerds of the world. Still, when someone like John Mayer does it without thinking, it makes audiences either think he’s perfect or absolutely insufferable.
Because as much as Mayer can play that guitar like it’s second nature, hearing songs like ‘Your Body is A Wonderland’ and ‘Daughters’ can be pretty excruciating. His heart may have been in the right place, but there are pieces of those tracks that can be a chore to sit through, with most of his lines coming off as more than a condescending asshole than someone who genuinely wants to relate to his audience.
There are more than a few blemishes in there, but Nicks felt that the good far outweighed the bad in Mayer’s case, saying, “I have been friends with John Mayer for a long time. I think John Mayer is one of the finest songwriters ever. He is right up there with James Taylor, Don Henley and those people. I really love him and respect him for those beautiful songs.” And it’s not like that argument doesn’t hold any water.
As much as his discography can be spotty, Continuum is one of the finest examples of straightforward pop-rock of the 2000s. Outside of having immaculate players like Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino behind him, Mayer is playing the kind of tunes that can break both hearts and fingers for anyone trying to copy him, like the relentless fingerpicking in ‘Stop This Train’ or the cleanest guitar tone that anyone has ever heard on ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’.
Is it necessarily the kind of music that Nicks would make herself? No, but that doesn’t really matter. The world already has its own Stevie Nicks, so she was more concerned with listening to someone who had a unique outlook on life than trying to make a clone of what Fleetwood Mac sounded like.
