Day 262: Stevie Nicks – Bella Donna

I’m still bogged down with the flu. Currently I’m on day three of lying in bed with the Real Housewives if New York to keep me company, and I didn’t think I could reach a limit with that, but unfortunately I’m inching closer by the minute. As a welcome change of pace, I’ll listen to a bit of Stevie Nicks.

Album cover courtesy of Modern Records

Released in 1981, Bella Donna was the debut solo album of Stevie Nicks, which she started working on in 1979 when she was recording Tusk with Fleetwood Mac. She said that her goal at the time was for the album to sound like a girl version of Crosby Stills & Nash, and for it to sound nothing like Fleetwood Mac. It sold platinum within months of its release, and within 10 years it was certified quadruple-platinum.

Bella Donna was Stevie Nicks’ opportunity to branch out and get to write and arrange songs without the input of Lindsay Buckingham, or the rest of the band. She says that her pursuing solo work didn’t end up breaking up Fleetwood Mac but brought them closer together, presumably because she had an outlet of her own and she became more confident as an artist.

The album is the first full-length record with her very own Stevie Nicks brand of magic, and it’s unsurprisingly a great listen. I was looking at some reviews that praised her musicality but panned the lyrics as meaningless esoteric woo-woo waffle, but as a lover of woo-woo waffle, it speaks to me. Stevie isn’t one of those rock front-women who try to appeal to male audiences as much, if not more, as she does to women, instead it seems like she’s making music from a woman’s point of view and for women. I think that’s why so many of my ilk are so emotionally attached to her —as a woman in rock, she’s in a male space but she’s still unapologetically for the girls.

Bella Donna isn’t as good as Fleetwood Mac at their peak, but that’s almost an impossible bar to clear. The simplicity of the album sometimes feels like it’s taken a bit too far, it just doesn’t have the emotional impact that we all know she’s capable of inducing. But it’s still a perfectly enjoyable album and I know I’ll listen to it again. I’m giving it an 8.5/10.