The “one demand” Stevie Nicks made while working with Gorillaz
It doesn’t seem like the most natural collaboration on paper: legendary Fleetwood Mac singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks and electro-rock virtual band Gorillaz. But if Damon Albarn has a knack for anything, it’s bringing in seismic talent and seamlessly blending in his own signature sound.
Nicks contributed vocals to Gorillaz’s 2023 single ‘Oil’ from their album Cracker Island. She was introduced to the group via producer Greg Kurstin, who had previously produced Nicks’ 2020 song ‘Show Them The Way’. It didn’t take long for Nicks to agree to appear on the song, but she did have one request.
“I love [‘Oil’] so much,” Nicks told Zane Lowe in 2022. “But this is the only thing I asked for. If you make a video of this, because that’s how I know about the Gorillaz is because of all their cartoon videos, I want to be in the ‘Oil’ video. I want to be a Gorilla, and I wanna have like big false eyelashes… I wanna have blonde hair, right? So that’s what I said. This is my one ‘demand’ that I will make, so they’re doing it as we speak.”
Nicks eventually got her wish, appearing in cartoon form alongside the other digital members of the band in the visualiser for ‘Oil’. She didn’t quite get the big false eyelashes that were part of her deal, but Nicks does have the blonde hair she requested. The final result is a mix between Nicks’ 1970s persona and the crooked style of Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett.
“I think that song is like somewhere between love and war because when it’s on like, ‘interlocking cluster bombs,’ right? And then there’s like, ‘fill it up with love’ — my favourite part,” Nicks added. “It’s going from interlocking cluster bombs to fill it up with love, and I’m like somehow this clever songwriter… moulded these two sides of this, and I’m going like, ‘Is there a touch of Ukraine in here?’ I know, maybe, maybe not. Who knows. But [with] the whole ‘fill it up with love,’ I can still be this person.”
“What does he say? At the end, he says, ‘But I’m not that cold, but I could forget you, but when I walk away, I could forget you,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, that was kind of cold, actually.’ But okay, because it’s what came to his head when he was writing that sentence, you know? So I learned those words and the fact that it’s called ‘Oil,’ I’m like ‘Is that water and oil? Or fire and oil? Or, you know, like ice and fire? What?’ Whatever it is, I can’t wait until it comes out because I’m so proud of it. Now… I was an honorary Heartbreaker, I was an honorary Foo Fighter, and now I’m an honorary Gorilla, I was so happy.”
Check out the video for ‘Oil’ down below.
