Fleetwood Mac may be over, but Stevie Nicks spell will never wane

Stevie Nicks wins landslide of approval at BST Hyde Park, London

The singer smoothly mixed Fleetwood Mac hits with solo material and was boosted by an appearance from Harry Styles

★★★★☆

by David Smyth

Financial Times

Photo: Anthony Pham

As with the arrival of a city-crushing monster, you heard the screams before you saw him. Harry Styles wasn’t announced before he strolled on to the Hyde Park stage to join Stevie Nicks for her encore, but by the forest of rising phone screens and the voices raised in swooning abandon, it was immediately clear something big was afoot.

In hindsight, this stellar duet might have been expected. The 76-year-old face of Fleetwood Mac has called Styles “the son I never had”. He was chosen to induct her into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, and that same year she joined him at one of his Los Angeles concerts to sing her tear-stained ballad “Landslide”. Here they shared vocals on the 1975 song again while photographs of Christine McVie flicked past on the big screens. The other female star of Fleetwood Mac, who died two years ago, would have celebrated her 81st birthday on the day of this show.

Styles also played the Tom Petty role on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, a smouldering rocker and Nicks’s debut solo single from 1981. At no point did he take over, however, simply making a “We’re not worthy” gesture in her direction and saying “It’s coming home” as a brief footballing aside.

In April, Nicks popped up on physical copies of Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, as the author of a poem printed on the sleeve. Meanwhile, Fleetwood Mac’s most recent greatest hits collection has been in the UK top 20 almost constantly since its release in 2018. And, last autumn, Mattel unveiled a $55 Stevie Nicks Barbie doll. If she were any closer to the centre of popular culture, she would have been playing left back in Berlin on Sunday night.

Her influence was physically evident in the crowd, too, which included a huge number of women wearing layered, diaphanous skirts, palm-reader shawls and wide-brimmed hats — a female equivalent of the men who sculpt their hair into optimistic tributes to Paul Weller or Morrissey.

Nicks gave no indication that any aspect of her 2024 status came as a surprise. She seemed completely at home in front of this vast crowd, introducing songs with meandering anecdotes, as if at an intimate dinner party. Her singing voice, brittle and mystical, has lost little of its enchantress’s magic. She avoided the high notes in “Dreams”, but did so with a new arrangement that still suited the song.

With McVie gone and Lindsey Buckingham frozen out, it currently looks impossible for a line-up approximating peak Fleetwood Mac to appear on stage again. Solo, Nicks punctuated her set with many of her classic compositions for the band. The timeless melody of “Gypsy” still beguiled, and she threw everything into an epic “Gold Dust Woman”. But more space for her solo 1980s excursions was no bad thing. “If Anyone Falls”, “Stand Back” and the raucous “Edge of Seventeen” traded her haunting presence in Fleetwood Mac for delirious power-pop energy. The band may be over, but her individual spell looks like it will never wane.

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Hyde Park with Harry Styles July 12, 2024

Stevie Nicks: The Fleetwood Mac veteran brings magic to Hyde Park – with help from Harry Styles

It was genuinely special to witness Nicks duet with the young star at BST Hyde Park as a tribute to her late bandmate Christine McVie.

Neil McCormick, CHIEF MUSIC CRITIC

Telegraph

Photos Lorne Thomson

In my career as a music critic, I have heard the ear-shattering screech of teenage girls screaming many times. But I think this may have been the first time I have heard an audience of women of all ages give a kind of joyous approximation of the mass pop scream.

The object of their noisy enthusiasm was not, in fact, the star of the occasion, 76-year-old rock queen Stevie Nicks. The Fleetwood Mac veteran was certainly treated with respect, delight, enthusiasm and a touch of awe throughout an absolutely fantastic performance that put smiles on the faces of everyone on stage and in the crowd. But the screams were reserved for a guest who arrived for the last two songs, looking Hollywood handsome with chopped short hair and a baggy suit: boyband hero turned solo superstar Harry Styles.

When Styles was first charming the nation with One Direction, I don’t think this would have been anyone’s vision of his future: swinging a big orange guitar whilst standing in for Tom Petty on a rocking Stop Dragging My Heart Around and harmonising Christine McVie’s parts on a tender Landslide. As Britain’s premier contemporary pop star, Styles carries a lot of weight, but he showed the deep musical empathy to slip humbly into a supporting role with an all-time great, forging links from pop’s shining present to its glorious past. It was a genuinely special thing to witness, and Nicks was clearly moved as she drew him into a hug.

“The last time I was here in Hyde Park it was with Tom Petty, and that was the last time I saw Tom,” she had noted earlier of the great American rocker who died aged 66 in 2017. At the end, she spoke movingly about late Mac bandmate McVie. “This is Christine’s birthday,” she noted to cheers. (She would have been 81.) “It’s hard to sing a song about your best friend who died so suddenly,” she admitted. “My mom used to say when Stevie gets hurt, she runs to the stage, and that’s what I’ve been doing. And the only people who have helped me get through this are all of you.”

Fleetwood Mac may be no more, but the ladies – and, indeed, many gentlemen – of London came out for the band’s one true star on a cool summer evening in Hyde Park. There was a sense of cos-play about the occasion. Women of all ages bravely sported ballgowns, skimpy diaphanous cloaks and battered top hats in honour of the star’s distinctive look. Nicks dug into her own collection of cloaks, scarves and gowns as she twirled and sang, her voice lower and grittier than in her youth, but full of character and flair as she led us through the poetic narratives of her ethereal brand of magical blues rock. Her well-chosen solo songs sounded fantastic, with the great silver-haired guitarist Waddy Wachtel powering through Edge of Seventeen. The Mac material was transcendent. An extended psychedelic blues romp through Gold Dust Woman was better than I’d ever heard it, as free and wild as Nicks’ persona.

It was a very old-fashioned rock show. There wasn’t much in the way of stage production: some floaty screen imagery and coloured lights. It was all about a virtuoso band playing characterful songs with a charismatic star leading the way with free-flowing singing amidst welters of perfect harmonies. The woman’s got style. And, indeed, on this occasion, she had Harry Styles too.

Stevie Nicks "Edge of Seventeen" Certified 2x Platinum in the UK

 

Stevie Nicks "Edge of Seventeen" was certified 2x Platinum 

in the UK on July 12, 2024.

With Stevie Nicks headlining London’s BST Hyde Park over the weekend, Fleetwood Mac’s timeless "50 Years – Don’t Stop" collection ascends the Top 100 Albums Chart in the UK, up four in a return to the Top 10 at No.8 with 5,168 units sold.

"Rumours" also moves up on the chart to No.27 from No.32 last week. "Rumours" also moves up the vinyl Top 40 from No.10 last week to No.7 this week. On the Album Sales chart, "Rumours" moves up to No.14 from No.22 last week. 

In Scotland "Rumours" moves up the No.13 this week from No.19 last week. "Greatest Hits" moves up to No.75 from No.83 last week. 

In Ireland "50 Years - Don't Stop" moves up to No.11 from No.13 last week. "Rumours" moves up to No.27 from No.31 last week. 

Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" Achieves 1 Billion Streams

 

Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" has achieved 1 BILLION STREAMS on Spotify.  This is the 3rd track to reach that level following "Dreams" and "The Chain".

Stevie Nicks Live in London "Let’s hope she’ll be back for one last dance"

Stevie Nicks – BST Hyde Park, London, July 12

Harry Styles helps put the seal on an evening of leather, lace and memories

By Piers Martin

Uncut

Photo By laurenfrida on IG

Things were different the last time Stevie Nicks played Hyde Park. That was in 2017, when she opened for her best friend Tom Petty and joined him during his headline set for a run through “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, the hit the Heartbreakers wrote for her in 1981.

Petty is no longer with us, and nor is Christine McVie, Nicks’ soulmate in Fleetwood Mac, who’d become a fixture in that band again after years in the wilderness. “Whenever I’ve been hurt in my life, I’ve always run to the stage – and it’s always helped me,” says a visibly moved Nicks at the end of tonight’s set, before gesturing to the crowd: “You’ve always helped me.”

The stage is all Nicks has known for the past 50 years – and this sell-out Friday at British Summer Time is all about her. Her corner of Hyde Park is a sea of tasselled jackets, lace dresses, Stetsons and cowboy boots. A Nicks performance, or one by Fleetwood Mac, has been a rite of passage for millennials in the 21st century, and such occasions are becoming increasingly rare. 

These days, Nicks is a strangely ageless cosmic diva whose look, like her material, has remained unchanged since her mid-’80s prime. At 76, her voice is a little hoarser, and it was touch and go whether this show would even go ahead after she postponed earlier dates in Manchester and Glasgow following minor leg surgery. 

Nicks has been on the road pretty much full-time for two years, playing more or less the same 15-song set each show, but such is her charisma and the mythology of her songbook that you want to believe that she’s not going through the motions. She talks us through her famous shawls, and rambles endearingly about the circumstances that led to Stephen Stills writing “For What It’s Worth”, which she gives a political slant here by urging us to use our vote, maybe unaware the UK had an election last week. 

Her seasoned band, led by her longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who’s flanked by the equally capable Carlos Rios, are well-oiled and more than happy to lay it on thick during a combustible “Gold Dust Woman”. They tear into “Stand Back”, “Edge Of Seventeen” and “Free Fallin’” as if they’re fresh out of college. Nicks’ mystical heartland pop is still best realised in the Mac’s “Dreams” and “Gypsy”, the latter a 1982 love-letter to her nomadic self of the late-’60s. In many ways she’s been chasing that feeling ever since, which explains why the songs she performs span that golden period from 1975 to 1983, when everything went right, and which resonate so deeply with her fans. 

She brings out her voice coach, Steve Real, for “Leather And Lace”. He sings Don Henley’s part beautifully on the Bella Donna ballad, each looking into the other’s eyes, the purity in his voice contrasting with her coarser vocal.

For the encore, it’s genuinely thrilling when Harry Styles walks onstage with a guitar to play rhythm and sing “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Nicks, and after that “Landslide” – songs they’ve played together before but which here elevate what would have been a decent run-of-the-mill concert to an event that will be hard to forget. 

Dressed in a loose dark suit and light green shirt, a colourful songbird brooch on his lapel, Styles is a class act and seems a little overwhelmed at first, but helps Nicks deliver an emotional “Landslide” as a montage of images of Christine McVie roll across the huge screens. Today would have been her 81st birthday, Nicks points out. “Time makes you bolder, even children get older – and I’m getting older, too,” she sings in “Landslide”. Let’s hope she’ll be back for one last dance. 

Setlist

• Outside The Rain
• Dreams
• If Anyone Falls
• Gypsy
• For What It’s Worth
• Free Fallin’
• Wild Heart
• Bella Donna
• Stand Back
• Leather And Lace
• Gold Dust Woman
• Edge Of Seventeen

Encore

• Rhiannon
• Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
• Landslide

Free Fallin'

GYPSY

Stevie Nicks and Harry Styles Hyde Park London July 12, 2024

Harry Styles and Stevie Nicks Duet in Tribute to Christine McVie at BST Hyde Park Concert Christine McVie would have turned 81 on Friday.

By Thania Garcia

Variety

Photo: MJ Hewitt

Harry Styles joined Stevie Nicks‘ headlining set for the BST Hyde Park concert series on Friday for a duet of “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” and “Landslide.” Before he appeared on stage, Nicks told the audience in London that she asked Styles to help her in commemorating what would have been her late Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie‘s 81st birthday.

“At the end of the show, since the end of last year and since Christine passed away, I would say something about her, and I asked Harry to do this with me and it’s a lot to ask someone to sing a heavy song about a best friend that died so suddenly and so sadly,” she said. “What I want to say to you is that Christine was Harry’s girl, she was my girl, she was your girl, and she loved all of you, and today would’ve been her birthday.”

Styles was wearing an embroidered songbird pin, making a reference to McVie’s vocal performance in “Songbird,” the piano ballad off Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album “Rumours.”

Styles has not appeared on stage for a performance since the end of his “Love On Tour” on July 22, 2023 in Italy. His last full-length album was 2022’s “Harry’s House,” which won a Grammy for album of the year. He has remained largely out of the spotlight since.

Nicks, meanwhile, told the crowd at BST Hyde Park that she often turns to the stage when she is dealing with something as heavy as the sudden passing of McVie: “One thing that my mom used to say to me when I was little was… When I was hurt, she’d go ‘Stevie when you’re hurt, you always run to the stage.’ And that’s what I’ve been doing since Chris passed away.”

Nicks is a headliner for the concert series that also includes performances by Kings of Leon, Kylie Minogue, the Corrs, Stray Kids, Shania Twain, Robbie Williams and Andrea Bocelli.

Harry Styles joins Stevie Nicks in Hyde Park for tributes to Tom Petty and Christine McVie The pair performed ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ and ‘Landslide’

Kevin E G Perry Los Angeles

Independent UK

Photo: Ben Maden

Harry Styles joined Stevie Nicks as a surprise guest during the Fleetwood Mac singer’s headline performance at BST Hyde Park on Friday (July 12).

The former One Direction star, 30, duetted with Nicks, 76, on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” which she originally released in 1981 with the late Tom Petty and his band The Heartbreakers.

Nicks performed the song with Petty in Hyde Park in 2017, just months before the rock icon’s death at 66.

On stage at tonight’s show, Nicks said of Petty: “This is a special day for a lot of reasons, to be back here because I feel his presence. I know he’s at this event and he’s happy with me here.”

Styles remained on stage to perform the 1975 Fleetwood Mac classic “Landslide,” before Nicks delivered an emotional tribute to her late bandmate Christine McVie. McVie, who died in 2022 at the age of 79, would have turned 81 today.

Nicks told the crowd: “I want you to know that Christine was my girl and she loved all of us and today was her birthday.”

She added: “All of you have helped me get over [her death] and I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”

Nicks also thanked Styles for joining her on stage, saying: “Harry, I thank you - we thank you!”

Elsewhere in the concert, Nicks urged the crowd to be politically active and said she had never voted until she turned 70. “I was too busy,” she said. “Don’t be me; vote.”

Back in 2019, Nicks joked that Styles is the “love child” of her and her bandmate, Mick Fleetwood, after praising him for his eponymous debut album.

“He’s Mick’s and my love child,” Nicks told Rolling Stone. “When Harry came into our lives I said, ‘Oh my God, this is the son I never had.’ So I adopted him.

“I love Harry, and I’m so happy Harry made a rock and roll record – he could have made a pop record and that would have been the easy way for him,” she continued. “But I guess he decided he wanted to be born in 1948 too – he made a record that was more like 1975.”

That same year, Styles inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

“Stevie Nicks is the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a second time,” said Styles during the ceremony. “First, with Fleetwood Mac, and now for her unforgettable solo work. With Stevie, you’re not celebrating music from long ago through the mists of time. She was standing on stage headlining a place doing her best work just three nights ago. She is forever current. She is forever Stevie.”

Harry Styles, Stevie Nicks Duet ‘Landslide’ in Emotional Tribute to Christine McVie The duo also performed "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" at Hyde Park in London

BY ETHAN MILLMAN

Rollingstone

Stevie Nicks brought out longtime friend Harry Styles to join her for hits “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Landslide” during her concert at Hyde Park in London on Friday night, with Nicks taking the time to commemorate Christine McVie on what would’ve been her 81st birthday. McVie died in November of 2022 after suffering a stroke.

The show marks Styles’ first live performance since finishing his Love On Tour last year.

“Christine was Harry’s girl, she was my girl, she was your girl,” Nicks told the crowd in London on Friday. “She loved all of us, today was her birthday. It’s taken me all this time to try and be able to deal with this situation. One thing my mom used to say to me when I was little was when I was hurt, she’d go ‘Stevie when you’re hurt you always run to the stage. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since Chris passed away, is running to the stage. The only people that have been able to help me to get over this has been all of you.”

This isn’t the first time the two have played those songs live together; Nicks joined Styles to play “Landslide” at the Forum in Los Angeles at the end of 2019, and they played “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony that same year when Styles inducted Nicks into the Hall.

“With Stevie, you’re not celebrating music from long ago through the mists of time,” Styles said in his induction speech that night. “She was standing on stage headlining a place doing her best work just three nights ago. She is forever current. She is forever Stevie.”

STOP DRAGGIN' MY HEART AROUND

RHIANNON

LANDSLIDE