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By Annie Zaleski - Salon
In Slate’s annual Music Club, Slate music critic Carl Wilson emails with fellow critics—this year, Rolling Stone staff writer Brittany Spanos, New York Times contributor Lindsay Zoladz, and special guests Ann Powers, Jack Hamilton, Chris Molanphy, and Julyssa Lopez—about the year in music.
Hello again Music Clubbers,
First, Lindsay, I absolutely loved Letter to You, especially as a meditation on friends who have died in a year full of loss. It broke my heart and lifted me up in a way only Bruce Springsteen can.
To Ann’s question about musical lineages and what felt completely new, I would be remiss to not bring up one veteran rock star who has had quite the year: Stevie Nicks. The influence of her and Fleetwood Mac has never felt more potent in popular music, while one of the biggest songs she ever wrote for FM had a major comeback. It was the year of “Dreams,” in a year where it felt like we were in a dream deficit.
What was it about “Dreams,” one of many popular singles on Fleetwood Mac’s immensely popular 1977 album Rumours? It was a remarkable song even then, becoming the band’s only No. 1 hit in the United States. It’s one of the more subtle break-up songs on an album filled to the brim with divorce, infidelity, and heartbreak. Nicks’ now signature mysticism builds a quiet storm of her own as she gives a romantic weather report:
Thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing
Women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know
Growing up, “Dreams” always embodied a certain type of wistful, ’70s nostalgia. It was less about the decade itself, since I did not actually live through the ’70s, but the type of ’70s that was sold to me in Delia’s catalogs, sitcoms, and my own family’s vintage photos. There’s a sun-soaked, bohemian ethereality to that version of the decade, built both by retro revisionism and by the fact that a song like “Dreams” exists.
I noticed that “Dreams” was gaining some traction early during lockdown. This was mostly because I am someone who listens to a lot of Fleetwood Mac and solo Stevie Nicks, no pandemic needed, so it felt surreal to see the song all over TikTok and Spotify’s snitch-y sidebar of what your friends are listening to. On TikTok especially, the content around “Dreams” was so chaotically variant and diverse, it made me tear up to see the song reach so many different kinds of users and content creators. There were the girls in bell bottoms who would roller skate down empty streets to it.
There were the cosplayers, either dressing up as Nicks or writing visual fanfic of what it was like for her ex-boyfriend/bandmate/eternal bandmate Lindsey Buckingham to hear this particular break-up song about him in the studio for the first time.
Of course, because this is TikTok, there were also highly choreographed routines.
Nothing took off outside of TikTok quite like the serene, brain-cleansing footage of user @420doggface208—whose real name is Nathan Apodaca—skateboarding, drinking cranberry juice, and lip-syncing to “Dreams.” This particular video blew up one evening in October (actually while I was on the phone with Stevie Nicks, to briefly flex). Something about it hit our collective consciousness’ need for serenity now. We all aspire to be as pleasantly unbothered as Apodaca is, enjoying his juice and listening to Fleetwood Mac, with a road all to himself and his skateboard. No thunder or rain in sight.
Apodaca’s video became the type of viral moment that could quickly go sour: everyone had their own version and even Ocean Spray had capitalized on the unintentional #sponcon. But it still hasn’t: It became exciting to see it explode, even once the members of Fleetwood Mac recreated the video, with heavy artistic license.
The 15 Best Remixes Of 2020
4. “Edge Of Midnight (Midnight Sky Remix)” — Miley Cyrus & Stevie Nicks
Mashing Stevie Nicks’ “Edge Of Seventeen” with Miley Cyrus’ “Midnight Sky” is a stroke of genius.
Stevie Nicks lending her voice to Miley Cyrus’ “Midnight Sky” is an intergenerational collaboration for the ages.
- Idolator
The Boomer Rock Renaissance 2020 Never Saw Coming
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks’s brilliant October single “Show Them the Way” prays aloud for this generation to find a song that galvanizes its politics as the protest music of her own formative years did.
By Craig Jenkins - Vulture
#25 Fleetwood Mac, "Dreams"
Who else but Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham could keep re-breaking the same chain for over 40 years, from Tusk to TikTok? “Dreams” became the year’s most surprising TikTok sensation, inspiring Stevie, Lindsey, and Mick Fleetwood to join the fun — probably the closest we’ll ever get to a reunion. Yet another weird twist in the endlessly weird Mac saga. There’s something so beautiful — and so scary — in the way these bad lovers are still haunted by the music they made together, and how the music still refuses to give them their freedom. It’s official: Stevie is the thunder that only happens when it’s raining. And Stevie is always raining.
The Best Reissues And Box Sets Of 2020
- Tom Moon NPR
The Blu-ray of the concert will also be released on January 15, 2021. Available now for pre-order at Amazon.
PBS is airing the concert through out the month of December. Check your local listings. They are also offering DVD/CD, 2-LP Gold Vinyl and 11x17 Lithograph Donation Packages. Either individual or as a collection of all three (CD\DVD + Vinyl + 11x17 Lithograph).
The Lithograph is a PBS Exclusive - a high quality 11x17 lithograph of the 24 Karat Gold Tour theatrical artwork, with gold embossing on the text and a “Superfine white egg-shell” finish, sequentially numbered with gold-foil stamping.
Of all the disciples to worship at the altar of Stevie Nicks, none have managed to capture the attention of rock’s reigning priestess quite like Harry Styles.
Last year, when Styles inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he proclaimed the 72-year-old “everything you’ve ever wanted in a lady, a lover, in a friend.” Nicks has gushed about him in interviews as everything from “the son she never had” to her “love child” with bandmate Mick Fleetwood. Styles earned her official seal of approval after covering “The Chain” every night of his first solo tour in support of a record that sounds closer to Crosby, Stills & Nash than anything he released under his prior band.
“Harry could’ve lost a lot of fans, but he didn’t,” Nicks recently told Vogue over the phone. “I’m so proud of him because he took a risk and didn’t go the One Direction route. He loves One Direction, I love One Direction, and a gazillion other people do too, but Harry didn’t wanna go the pop route. He wanted straight-up rock and roll circa 1975.”
Nicks has been embracing some of the busiest years of her dual careers as both Fleetwood Mac frontwoman and solo sorceress—and doing so amid a global pandemic. Since she last performed with Styles at the Forum for his Fine Line release show in December, she’s released a 24 Karat Gold concert film and “Show Them the Way,” her politically minded single and first piece of original music in six years. After Miley Cyrus asked for Nicks’s blessing before releasing her “Edge of Seventeen”–tinged “Midnight Sky,” the two joined forces for an exhilarating new mash-up titled “Edge of Midnight.”
In honor of Styles making history as the magazine’s first solo cover boy, Nicks caught up with Vogue to answer all our questions about their cosmic connection. Currently beachside with her quarantine bubble in Hawaii, she’s been doing what one would expect Stevie Nicks to be up to during a pandemic: writing new music, dancing around her house to “Watermelon Sugar,” and “casting little spells.” As befitting rock’s foremost storyteller, our intended 30-minute chat turned into a two-hour confessional about her love of Styles, working with Cyrus for the first time, joining Fleetwood Mac, the president-elect Joe Biden, the Met Gala, betta fish funerals, and much more.
Your assistant just texted me a photo of the most gorgeous sunset I’ve ever seen. Where are you calling from?
We just got to Maui. It’s turning winter in Los Angeles, and I live close to the beach, where it’s colder than anywhere else in Southern California. Me and my quarantine buddies had a little break where we thought we could come over safely, so we did.
Did you bring your dogs along?
Yes. We have three—two Chinese cresteds and one Yorkshire—and they’re thrilled. I think this pandemic affected them too because they’re travelers. It’s just a two-week trip, but we brought enough stuff to last us a year. I don’t really come out of my room much since I don’t go to bed until seven in the morning and typically sleep until three—and that’s whether I’m in L.A. or London. Wherever I go, I still end up having breakfast at five in the afternoon.
Last time we spoke you talked about the inspiration behind writing “Show Them the Way” around the time of the 2008 election and waiting all these years release it until you felt the moment was right. How does it feel now to finally have it out in the world?
By Steve Baltin - Forbes
Anything Stevie Nicks says carries a massive amount of weight. She is a two-time member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, solo and with Fleetwood Mac, and one of the most beloved icons in music today.
So when she talks about her influences, those artists that shaped her sound, it is a fascinating read. And one of the main influences in the quartet that she says, " I just put in the big witches' pot and stirred it up and made it into one thing," to make her sound, happens to be fellow multiple member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (solo and with Buffalo Springfield), Neil Young, who turns 75 today.
So in honor of Young's seventy-fifth birthday, here is part three of my incredible 90-minute conversation with Nicks, where she talks about her quartet of influences, Bob Dylan and much more. If you want to know where Stevie Nicks' sound comes from, she tells you here. And not surprisingly it is some of the greats of music, like Crosby, Stills And Nash, who she talks about wanting to cover. How cool would that be?
Stevie Nicks: That’s a hard question. When I think of actual protest songs, the song that runs through my head is Bob Dylan’s "Tangled Up in Blue," “There was music in the cafes and revolution in the air." I was just losing my head the first time I heard "Tangled Up in Blue." Which was a long time ago, before there was ever a political bone in my body .But I understood that he was very political and that just everything he wrote was touched with some politics. And the idea that there was music in the cafes and revolution in the air, and that’s what music does to people. They may be out there protesting in the streets, but if there wasn’t a pandemic they’d still be going into restaurants and into bars and into clubs and discuss it in those places and play music and they’d be discussing it while music was playing. So I think that it’s what Bob Dylan meant by that statement. I just always think of that.
Nicks: Well I think I was definitely a conduit for this. I don’t know if I’ve ever written a political song actually. I did write a song, "Desert Angel,' for Desert Storm, and that was a long time ago. I was in Phoenix when that happened. I must have been pretty bummed out about it because I wrote that song. And I wrote "Illume" for 9/11and I’ve never been able to do "Illume" on stage, still, after all this time, because it’s too close. I don’t know if I could do it. And "Desert Angel," that I never did. Those are my three political songs, "Illume," "Desert Angel", and this one.
Nicks: Yeah, they do change for sure. It’s interesting that you bring up Jackson [Browne’s] song "These Days" because the line in that that I remember is the one, “Don't confront me with my failures / I have not forgotten them.” That line, because we all feel that way. You don’t have to bring up my failures to me because I know exactly what they were. That’s a pretty heavy statement. It’s like "Music in the cafes and revolution in the air," sometimes just a sentence out of somebody’s song will mean a million things to you, who didn’t write it. Just to the person that’s listening to it. And sometimes us as writers are the last people to really understand.
Nicks: I love Neil Young . I've been listening to a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young and Joni Mitchell and just that whole era of people. Buffalo Springfield in the last seven, eight months. I've been listening to a lot of their music on my Sonos and it makes me happy. And I've decided that Neil Young was actually a lot more...he wrote a lot of very loving love ballads. He was not only the huge rock and roll crazy guy that I always thought. There are so many ballads I've gone, "Wow, you know what? You're just a big pussycat. I can't believe it." No wonder they chose him to come into Crosby, Stills And Nash. They wanted somebody like the Eagles wanted Joe Walsh, they wanted somebody that would have that heavy hand. But then when you listen to something like "Slowpoke" or some of these amazing songs, I've been blown away over the last couple of months listening to his ballads going like, "This guy, really seriously, in a way, wanted to be in love."
Nicks: Yeah, I do too. And I'm glad that most of them got their hard rock parts out and then also got some of the beautiful love things out at the same time so that it wasn't like they were tacking on the other side at the end of their career. So they were actually written around the same time because I've been listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young and some of those songs, some of those records, are really sweet from Neil Young and I just never knew that.
Nicks: Well, that whole record. I spent my whole summer after my senior year listening to nothing but that record for three solid months. Every single song from "Helplessly Hoping" to a bunch of songs I would really like to record and talk about protest songs, "For What It's Worth" and "Ohio," they wrote some really amazing protest songs. You're like, "Wow, those things could have been written today too."
Nicks: "That Girl Could Sing," one of my favorite songs because I always wanted to think that, even though I didn't know Jackson Browne at that point, that he wrote that about me because, "Oh, I'm such a cool presence." And when you take, "She was a friend to me when I needed one," and you remember those sentences and even the melody of those sentences. When I tell people my greatest influences I say Joni Mitchell for phrasing, she could fit 50 words in a sentence and have them sound glorious without being rushed or crushed in, so I really learned a lot from her about phrasing. From Jackson I learned about writing love songs. From Crosby, Stills And Nash it was the three-part harmony I wanted Lori [Nicks], Sharon [Celani] and me to become like to make my first solo album, which we are doing even on this record, even on this song. There's one line where we do a three-part, "It was just another night in the presence of Martin Luther King," we did that in a three-part. And every time it goes by I go, "That was it, that was what I told Jimmy Iovine when I told him I wanted to produce the record." I told him, "I have two girl singers and they sing amazing. And together we have created a sound. It's like a Crosby, Stills And Nash sound and that's what we want. I don't always want my voice to be louder than theirs." And he said, "Okay, that's what we'll do." That's another thing. I'm so proud of this song, I'm so proud of the singing in this song. It maybe a political song, it maybe a protest song, it may just be a really good song. But what it also is, it's a really well-sung song. And I'm so proud of the girls because we didn't have much time and we pulled off some of the best vocals we have ever done since 1980 when we started Bella Donna.
Nicks: When I was coming out of high school to my second year of junior college that was when those four influences really started to take over my life, to the point I'd get in an elevator with Lindsey [Buckingham] and I would be singing Joni Mitchell's "Same Situation:" and he'd look at me and go, "Don't you know anything else?" And I'd look at him and go, "No, I don't. That's all I know right now is that song. I'm just gonna continue to sing it, so thank you" (laughs). That was how completely attached I would get to each one of the songs on all those records. I would just pick one and stick with it for two weeks. That's how I learned. I put them all together, all those people, I blended them into one voice. I took what I thought was the greatest thing about the way Joni phrased and about how Jackson picked out incredibly romantic things to say and about how Crosby, Stills And Nash had the three-part harmony that made me think I should be on the Southern Cross sailboat that was going across the ocean singing at the top of your lungs and that Neil Young was actually a sweet, loving guy that just wanted to be in love besides being a rock star. And all of that I just put in the big witches' pot and stirred it up and made it into one thing. And that was my inspiration for everything I ever did.
From the November 23, 2020 issue of People Magazine with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the cover.
I dance around my apartment all the time. I like to make up dances to Lady Gaga’s song “Applause.” my girlfriends and I have our own version of the Hustle that we update.
My niece just got married, and I couldn’t go to her wedding. I can’t run over and hug my friends. My mantra every day is: I’m not getting [the coronavirus]; I can’t chance it.
I found out I’m allergic to gluten. But I just had these gluten-free brownies from Erewhon Market in Pacific Palisades that taste like chocolate soufflé. As long as they exist, I can do this.
Lily, my Chinese crested, just the way she walks: Her little butt does the total Marilyn Monroe wiggle. It’s back and forth, back and forth. I say to her, “We will get old, but this will never get old.”
By JULIE JORDAN
Lindsey Buckingham has announced an intimate livestream show. On Saturday, December 5th at 5:30PM PST / 8:30PM EST, Lindsey will deliver a completely live performance from his home studio in Los Angeles, featuring hits from across his iconic catalog. Fans from around the world will also have access to purchase Q&A VIP packages for the show, along with exclusive merchandise. Tickets are priced at $15 and go on sale on Friday, November 13th at 7am PST.
Not able to make this show? No problem, Lindsey’s performance will remain exclusively available to ticket purchasers for 48 hours post show.
