“Freaked out”: The Stevie Nicks song inspired by Roe v Wade
Stevie Nicks has seen it all—not just musically but in society as well. Over the decades, she has watched the world progress as the fight for stronger women’s rights has progressed. At the same time, however, she has also witnessed unsettling truths emerge and laws passed that signal a darker shift in the wrong direction.
At the crux of all this, Nicks has also embodied everything great about the quintessential female rockstar. Earning her keep during a time when women weren’t as easily embraced in rock as their male counterparts, Nicks absorbed the kind of confidence most could only dream of, often fighting tooth and nail to get her ideas heard in the right way.
While making it in the music industry is never without complications—and Nicks’ struggles went beyond just being a woman—many of her challenges stemmed from the same long-standing inequalities that have held both the industry and its women back for decades. After all, being in Fleetwood Mac came with its own difficulties, made even harder by the fight to have her voice heard.
However, throughout the years, she has also lived through several distinctive advancements in the movement towards greater women’s rights, including more laws for equal pay and domestic abuse, the #MeToo movement, and a broader increase of representation and respect across most major industries. At the same time, though, she has also watched many of these fights and dreams crumble, more recently when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
Diminishing a nearly 50-year case that gave women abortion rights, Nicks joined many in expressing her anguish at such a turn, marking it a significant setback in the entire movement. Of course, all of these reasons were justified, but while others sourced different avenues to express their rage, Nicks did the one thing she knows best: channel her frustration into her art.
The resulting song, ‘The Lighthouse’, began the day she learned of the development, sparking a fury that didn’t just exist in today’s context but went back to the day it first came into place. “When Roe v. Wade was banished, I thought Mika [Brzezinski] was going to crawl over the desk,” she recalled to Rolling Stone. “What she did was remind me what a loss this was. Because I can remember being so happy when it came into being in 1973. It was like we were safe.”
Noting how the news signified “everything” from healthcare to all the procedures “that need to be done in our bodies”, Nicks came up with ‘The Lighthouse’ using how “freaked out” she was as a starting point before building it out into a bigger, more hard-hitting statement. It flowed out of her so easily that she hadn’t even given it much thought before the words were suddenly all on the page, waiting to be heard by the rest of the world.
Of course, this effortless ease didn’t just come from a place of understanding, Nicks had lived experience as well after having an abortion in 1978 after becoming pregnant with Don Henley’s child. While she recognises some might not agree with her decision, she stands by her choice and hopes that other women will continue to be able to do the same, especially when it comes to their own bodies.
