(Credits: Far Out / Atlantic Catalog Group)
There are certain lyrics that haunt you. They stay with you from the very second you first hear them, punched into your soul and your brain with all the strength of their emotional power, like the singer or the songwriter, hurled them right at you like a swift right jab to the heart. It’s one thing to land a punch; it’s a whole other thing to make it linger. On ‘Silver Springs’, Stevie Nicks landed a hit that was designed to last a lifetime.
Nicks has penned many savage lyrics about the world, about people she loved and even about herself. Her pen is a sharp, introspective one that has never feared a bit of cutting. But she’s also not unfamiliar with being the one getting cut by someone else’s words.
I guess to be an artist, and to love an artist, is to accept that art will come like wedding vows; for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. When Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks first met and fell in love, and when they began collaborating, both of them likely knew the contract they were sort of signing into, stating that at the end, things could get messy and they could get messy in song. It was inevitable that both parties would write about their split simply because that’s what artists do and that’s how they process things. They just likely didn’t think they’d have to be doing it in the same room.
Rumours demanded that, though. After one album of blissful collaboration when the pair joined Fleetwood Mac as a double-act, they split up. The exact reasons are unknown, as they often are when a long-term relationship breaks down. There was no one major betrayal or one big final fight, instead, it was a mess of disagreements and small ways both of them had changed, especially as their new fame packed on added pressure. It could have been an amicable split because of that, but as both wanted to stay in the band, the band demanded material.
Then it became painful. Buckingham wrote ‘Go Your Own Way’, leaving Nicks feeling deeply insulted by its lyrics. She wrote ‘Dreams’ to try and purge her own feelings, but that wasn’t quite enough. They collaborated on tracks like ‘The Chain’ and ‘I Don’t Want To Know’. But as the arguments in the studio got worse and worse as the emotional tensions kept boiling over, nothing was good enough. Nicks needed to throw her punch.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (Credits: Far Out / Polydor)
‘Silver Springs’ is that punch, and when she first shared it in the studio, the whole band knew it was too rough and too raw to make the track listing. It was a late-stage addition, written as they were too down to the wire to make it work in time. But it found a perfect home as a b-side to ‘Go Your Own Way’, the song it was in spiritual response to, and directed right at the person on the a-side.
It starts sweet and somewhat tender as Nicks croons in her heartbreak, “And don’t say that she’s pretty / And did you say that she loved you? / Baby, I don’t wanna know.” Of all the songs written about their split, this one is the most visceral. Nicks wanders through the process of hurt and healing in far more plain-speaking language than ‘Dreams’. But almost just like the breakup itself, which started okay and got worse and worse, the song follows the same pattern as Nicks seems to spiral around this topic until it lands on a lash out.
“Time cast a spell on you / But you won’t forget me,” she sings, before nearly spitting, “I know I could have loved you / But you would not let me.” That’s an emotional blow, yes. But it’s not the punch.
The punch comes later, and it lands so heavy that people genuinely wondered whether Nicks, who was deemed The White Witch, was actually hexing Buckingham as she sings, “I’ll follow you down / ‘Til the sound of my voice will haunt you,” wailing, “You’ll never get away from the sound / Of the woman that loved you.”
It’s savage because it’s so specific, but then also completely not. It’s specific because Buckingham never would get away from Nicks’ voice in a very literal sense – they share a musical legacy, they shared a band, and even when he quit, came back and then was fired, there was no escaping it. But also in a wider emotional way, Nicks’ somewhat hex speaks to the fact that Buckingham, despite his cruel flippancy on ‘Go Your Own Way’, would never, ever truly get away from the memory of Nicks’ love, the life they shared, and the ways he hurt her.
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