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Tue 25 August 2026 3:00, UK
Stevie Nicks didn’t need to work hard all the time to get a great song to come together.
Sometimes, the greatest artists consider songwriting like pulling teeth every time they walk into the studio, and while Nicks was willing to go the extra mile for her art every time she laid down one of her tracks, part of the beauty of her music was her being able to capture the essence of every story that she told without needing all the bells and whistles. She knew that the atmosphere was what mattered the most, but it’s not like she forgot the importance of what great vocals sound like.
She didn’t need to have a stratospheric range to melt people’s hearts whenever she sang ‘Dreams’, but that’s because people were paying attention to the other side of her musical identity. Anyone could have been swept up in the drama of the Rumours sessions, but Nicks knew that she needed to leave all of her hang-ups at the studio and work her ass off to make sure that she could make a tune that she could be proud of, but that’s a lot easier said than done when you have Lindsey Buckingham next to you.
Buckingham was bound to be strict even before he and Nicks broke up, but since most of their greatest hits devolved into screaming matches while being recorded, it’s no surprise that Nicks was going to need a break after a while. She couldn’t live in that headspace for the rest of her life, but she was going to be the last person to say that she wanted Fleetwood Mac to end because of her pettiness.
There was a lot more that the band had to offer, but she knew that she needed to get her songs out, however she could, when making Bella Donna. She may have received a token hit on the record from Tom Petty, but there’s never a moment that goes by on the record where you don’t feel like it is Nicks’s vision to make the kind of album that the band might not have completely approved of.
Some of the songs had been put on ice for years before seeing the light of day, but when she got her backup singers on her solo debut, she had a very specific vision in mind. A lot of the session players included some of the biggest names in music around that time, but aside from having members of the Eagles on the record and even Buckingham laying down some guitar, Nicks felt that Crosby, Stills and Nash was the main objective when she was making the album.
CSN were already one of the finest vocal groups out at the time, but Nicks wanted to do everything she could to be in a band with that kind of vocal sound, saying, “I spent a whole summer singing along to this record. I loved the harmonies, and learned to sing all three of the parts. I knew that I wanted to be in a band with the same kind of harmonies. It was the three-part harmony I wanted Lori [Nicks], Sharon [Celani] and me to become like to make my first solo album.”
Further reading: From The Vault
So does her debut sound like some of the smoothest harmonies of all time? Well, yes and no. There are still moments where her voice sounds immaculate, but a lot of those close harmonies worked a lot better in certain spots, especially when they’re used to create the kind of atmosphere and energy that came out in songs like ‘Kind of Woman’ or when Don Henley guested on ‘Leather and Lace’.
Because while Nicks had a fascination with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the best moments on her record were where she got to live out her dreams through her songs before anything else. No one needed a female-led version of Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the most that Nicks could hope for was somehow to find her own voice whenever she began working on any one of her masterpieces.
