(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 4 March 2026 23:30, UK
The entire story of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks could be enough to fill an entire romance novel at this point.
Both of them may have been musical soulmates from the minute that they played together, but when listening to both of them fight back and forth during the Rumours sessions, it’s not like Fleetwood Mac was exactly happy campers whenever they walked into create their masterpieces. But even though they radiated California sunshine whenever their tunes came on, one of Nicks’s crowning achievements came from all the way on the other side of the country.
Then again, it’s strange to think that Fleetwood Mac could lean so heavily into that Americana sound. The band were split right down the middle between British and American members, but as soon as Buckingham hit those haunting notes in ‘Rhiannon’ and the rest of the band joined in, something always felt right whenever they started playing together. And while Nicks didn’t play an instrument, she was as instrumental in the band’s development as anyone in the group.
Her stage presence is practically her superpower whenever she plays her music, and while her voice is one of the most powerful female voices in rock and roll, a lot of her greatest moments centred around her going to some other place whenever she performs. She may have had a song entitled ‘Gold Dust Woman’ years after she joined, but that kind of person was present well before she recorded it during Rumours, especially when she started to get more and more sporadic whenever her songs started.
But for a kid with just a dream in her head back in the day, it was anyone’s guess whether she and Buckingham were going to be the biggest name in music. They had been travelling everywhere they could to get a gig as Buckingham Nicks, and during their various trips around the country, there was something about the title of Silver Springs, Maryland, that resonated with her the minute that she saw it passing on the highway.
Nicks has never been there, but she felt like the poetic aspect meant much more to her than what the fine people of Maryland were actually like, saying, “We were in Maryland somewhere driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Spring, Maryland. And I loved the name. …Silver Springs sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. And uh, ‘You could be my silver springs…’ that’s just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me.”
Once the song was actually finished, though, Nicks was singing a bit of a different tune all the way through. She and Buckingham had officially come to an end, and even if she had a lot more going for her with songs like ‘Dreams’, ‘Silver Springs’ was her kiss-off to Buckingham, almost like she wanted every single line to hit him right in his chest whenever she sang the chorus about letting go of the woman that loved him.
But even for a song that had a lot more fire in its belly, there’s never a point where it becomes too angry in the same way that ‘Go Your Own Way’ does. Nicks wanted to keep the spiritual angle of the song title, and when she sings about all of the pain that she went through to keep them together all those years ago, she does a much better job at accepting the fact that the old flame has finally been snuffed out.
Both of them can rekindle that flame whenever they play the tune together, but that one Maryland town meant a lot more than a good song to her. That was the kind of place that she was always hoping to reach as a songwriter, and whenever she’s singing some of her best tunes, here’s hoping that she’s found that kind of musical paradise a few times when she sings this song.