(Credits: Spotify)
Mon 12 January 2026 2:00, UK
If there’s one person who you know won’t hold back on voicing their opinion, it has to be Stevie Nicks.
The phrase ‘Who put 50p in you?’ springs to mind, but if were actually the case in a literal sense, Nicks would be more like a slot machine with coins being inserted left, right, and centre. Essentially, this is a long-winded way of saying that she has no issue with saying exactly what she wants, even if that means that her mouth has run her into a bit of trouble from time to time.
A lot of this stems from being a woman who pushed her way to the forefront of rock and roll in the 1970s, a time that – let’s be fair – wasn’t exactly renowned for its equality and openness to females taking up prominent positions in any walk of life, let alone the music industry. Then consider the fact that Nicks wasn’t just a wallflower member of any band, but blazing at the heart of one of the biggest in the world.
She has weathered her fair share of storms; we can hand her that much. There is, of course, a lot to be gained from having endured this experience: to this day, she still possesses an innate level of effervescence, coolness, charm, and sexiness that she may never have been able to harbour if the odds hadn’t been so starkly stacked against her at times.
With all that comes with a certain smug acknowledgement that she sits at the top of the tree for rock female performers, but she still obviously wants people to whom she can pass down the baton. That’s what made one particular era in music so completely disheartening to Nicks, as she felt all her hard work as a woman blazing a path had been thrown back in her face.
“I’ve never been to a strip club but I turn on MTV and see in every single video what it must look like… if you have to work so hard at appearing sexy, then perhaps you weren’t that sexy after all, perhaps your music has no sensuality, perhaps your music is dull, indeed, that you have no choice but to pelvic thrust your way through a pop video in a leather bikini in order to detract from its mediocrity… it might be advisable to do something else,” the frontwoman once said.
Of course, she didn’t specifically call out fellow female stars in this regard, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that from the time that she burst onto the scene in the 1970s, representing something vital but chic in her sexuality, things quickly moved from innovation to degradation. In certain quarters of the pop music sphere, the female fraternity of fame shifted into a realm of skimpy outfits and provocative moves – the antithesis of everything Nicks had fought for.
It goes without saying that this issue extended into something far more endemic and that the blame did not lie with women themselves, but a culture that realised their values as stars and were constantly pining for more. Coupled with the rise of MTV, that ideal was beamed into every living room, bedroom, and workplace of music fans all over the world – in short, the sexual pop appeal had gone global.
The fight to reclaim that undeniably persists to this day, and it is one that Nicks, in all her now over seven decades, continues to shine her light for. It’s only in more recent years that her space in the tree has got markedly busier with a lot more female talent catching her up to join the ranks, and for that there is not one hint of jealousy, and only celebration.
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