(Credits: Far Out / Stevie Nicks)
Thu 25 September 2025 18:30, UK
The music Stevie Nicks made always came from the heart rather than the mind.
Many of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest fucking songs did end up getting that extra layer of polish from Lindsey Buckingham, but the reason why tunes like ‘Dreams’ work so well is that they capture a feeling that goes beyond the individual notes that are being played. Nicks is the master of capturing a moment in time, but not every part of her life necessarily has to be cheerful all the time.
Granted, Nicks has managed to put a happy face on even the most horrible situations. No one else could have turned Rumours into one of the happiest-sounding records of all time if they were on the verge of falling apart, and yet, despite the band members screaming at each other in between takes, it’s easy to hear all of them turning in musical gold every time they sang tunes like ‘You Make Loving Fun’.
But while Nicks could always speak her mind in the group, there were bound to be limits on where she could go. She never wanted to have the massive solo career that she ended up getting, but by the time that Bella Donna started making waves, people realised who they were working with. This was a songwriting juggernaut, and it would have been a crime for the band to mess with tunes like ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ or ‘Leather and Lace’.
Even though her first record does have a little bit of help from people like Don Henley and Tom Petty, and the Heartbreakers, it’s not like she couldn’t make it on her own, either. The lion’s share of the tunes feel like the culmination of everything she had been working towards since the first Buckingham Nicks album, but that didn’t mean tunes like ‘The Edge of Seventeen’ didn’t come with some musical wounds.
The tune practically sounds like a hit from the moment that guitar line kicks in, but after coming to grips with losing members of her family and John Lennon’s passing, this was no longer Nicks having fun. This was her trying to bring about her own version of a musical exorcism when she opened her mouth, and even if the tune captured her grief at the time, it takes a lot for Nicks to reach that same vulnerable place every night.
Nicks knew that she could make it through any song that she wrote, but ‘The Edge of Seventeen’ will always be one of the most tortured songs for her to perform, saying, “I can get up on stage and sing ‘Edge Of Seventeen’ and still feel just as traumatised today as I did then, when I first sang it at my piano. It’s just so heavy. I use that word a lot. I know that it’s an old hippie word, but it just really seems to be the right word.”
Then again, it’s not a case of Nicks wanting to put herself through pain for the sake of her audience, either. The thought of losing someone doesn’t get any easier as time ticks on, but ‘Edge of Seventeen’ is also her personal way of being able to remember their legacy rather than letting them fade into the background.
And judging by the kind of music that she’s made going forward, the emotional core of her music has only become stronger thanks to tracks like ‘The Lighthouse’. Anyone could have gone the route of being a traditional pop singer, but in Nicks’s writing, you can hear a musical soul that’s happy to share all her emotions with her audience.
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