Credit: Far Out / Stevie Nicks
Tue 22 September 2026 21:00, UK
Stevie Nicks didn’t need to limit herself to one brand of rock and roll song throughout her career.
She had so much to offer the music world, and even though there were times when she tried out experiments that didn’t work, you can never say that she didn’t put her all into everything that she ever made on her records. The songs she was singing were coming from her soul more often than not, but any great pop songwriter knows that you can never go wrong with singing about love.
Nicks herself always knew that a good love song could make or break some of her best albums, but she would have probably wished that she could write about literally anything else by the time Rumours started. It was bad enough to be breaking up with a bandmate that you had known most of the years of her life, but the fact that she had to deal with Lindsey Buckingham also writing songs about her wasn’t going to do her any favours when listening to tunes like ‘Go Your Own Way’.
She could take the dignified approach on most of her tunes, but there were always going to be those little voices in her head begging her to go solo. After all, she was already one of the biggest stars in the band, and considering that tunes like ‘Rhiannon’ and ‘Gold Dust Woman’ were among some of the most celebrated in the band’s catalogue, she could have probably put together a half-decent record with her eyes closed if she wanted to.
Bella Donna was already a statement of intent from her at the time, but she didn’t want to skimp out on her record, either. She hoped that it would have the chance of standing next to the other great singer-songwriters in her genre, and while Tom Petty ended up helping her out a good deal on ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’, the same person who wrote ‘Edge of Seventeen’ really didn’t need to be guided through her first solo record.
All that she needed was to fill out the record, and she already had a treasure trove to sift through. Long before she started pulling songs from her vaults in the 2010s, Nicks was bringing out songs like ‘Think About It’ and refining them for her solo career. If Fleetwood Mac didn’t want them, she was going to give them a home, and while ‘Leather and Lace’ wasn’t even on her radar at the time, getting someone like Don Henley to sing on it was a match made in heaven.
The Eagles frontman was already a perfect vocal foil for her, and while Nicks didn’t write it for herself, she knew it was a step above anything that she normally wrote, saying, “Don and I had been going out for quite awhile, and, bless his heart, he did sing it with me, and again, as fate would have it, it became one of the most special love songs that I would ever write…and remains that, even today, after all these years. All in all, it was an unforgettable experience, as was he.”
Further reading: From The Vault
A lot of Nicks’ best songs tend to stick to the wondrous side of romance, but this is a much more grounded song than anything she had done before. She had already offered the tune to Waylon Jennings before he turned it down, but when you listen to her belting out the song, you can tell why it would have fit so well with a country star like him, especially with the kind of Americana imagery in the tune.
‘The Gold Dust Woman’ always had a more mystical outlook on what rock and roll was supposed to be, but there was no reason to believe that she couldn’t make a tune that was this direct. She never forgot about her knack for lyrics, but sometimes when talking about a topic as universal as love, getting straight to the point can often be the best approach.
