Stevie Nicks' Charismatic Energy: Lessons in Feminine Power

Stevie Nicks, the iconic rock singer and songwriter, is known for her captivating stage presence and enchanting performances. Her music is not only memorable, but it also exudes a unique and undeniably magical energy. Nicks' magical energy stems from her mysterious and ethereal persona. She often incorporates elements of witchcraft and mysticism into her music and aesthetic, creating an otherworldly atmosphere that draws audiences in. This mystical quality is particularly evident in her fashion choices, with flowing dresses, shawls, and capes becoming synonymous with her image. One of the key factors contributing to Nicks' magical energy is her hauntingly beautiful voice.

I’ve read two books about her. The first was Stephen Davis’s Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks , and, most recently, I listened to Rob Sheffield’s Audible original The Wild Heart of Stevie Nicks , which is where this timeline and most of its quotes are derived from. Maybe if we all asked ourselves “What Would Stevie Nicks Do?” a little more often, we’d have a much, much more interesting world, where people revere girl gangs with bad-ass harmony.

Even Joni Mitchell, so famously defined by her litany of love affairs and her early anthem about being busy being free, was married twice, once for twelve years. The first was Stephen Davis s Gold Dust Woman The Biography of Stevie Nicks , and, most recently, I listened to Rob Sheffield s Audible original The Wild Heart of Stevie Nicks , which is where this timeline and most of its quotes are derived from.

One of the key factors contributing to Nicks' magical energy is her hauntingly beautiful voice. Her distinctively husky yet powerful vocals have the ability to transport listeners to a different realm, evoking a range of emotions and creating an intimate connection between the artist and her audience. This sense of vulnerability and raw emotion adds to the mystique surrounding Nicks and her music.

Season of the Witch: Why Music Needs Magical Women Like Stevie Nicks

From witch matriarch Stevie Nicks to Grimes, Florence, and HAIM, these women all use magical, feminine imagery to reassert their confidence.

Illustrations by Ralph Damman "I always wanted to be a witch," Stevie Nicks gushed to MTV in 1987, cloaked in as much black then as ever, reflecting on her childhood love of Halloween. "The dripping black sleeves… this was a style I thought was just absolutely great, and that continued right into my life." It was an image of power within femininity that stuck. As budding songwriter in the 70s, Nicks gravitated toward the name Rhiannon in a supernatural novel, inspiring her to conjure a new backstory for Rhiannon as a Welsh witch in command of nature. Nicks brought her tale to Fleetwood Mac upon joining the band for their eponymous self-titled debut album in 1975, taking authorship of the first bona-fide hit of Fleetwood's classic lineup and her image as a witch – not within the very real religion of Wicca, but symbolically.

To embrace the label of being a witch is to reclaim pride in being an independent woman, defying gender conventions, asserting control of your agency, and telling the patriarchy to shove it. Embodying witch imagery was as practical for Nicks as it was emotional, a means of accentuating her movements on arena stages. Swaying in the moment became twirls of grandeur, her sleeves, veils and skirts casting sparkles and shadows onto faces below. Nicks even winked to her legacy with a cameo on American Horror Story: Coven in 2014, playing piano so tenderly it moves one of the coven members to twirl under Nicks' strictly-musical spell. It's no wonder that women in music, past and present, identify with witch imagery to assert their own confidence in life, subversion, and romance.

Yoko Ono recorded the funky "Yes, I'm A Witch" in 1974 during her brief separation from John Lennon to affirm her independence: "Yes, I'm a witch / I'm a bitch / I don't care what you say / My voice is real / My voice speaks truth / I don't fit in your ways," Ono coolly sings. Grace Jones proudly belts "Rather be a bitch, just look at me / Being a witch is what I'd rather be" on the opening of her 1979 album Muse "Sinning," touting how irresistible she is to a lover while asserting herself as the sensual alpha: "It's no fantasy / You're trapped with me / Just don't get tired and I won't bring you down." Siouxsie and The Banshees riddled songs and videos such as "Spellbound" with references to witches including black cats, voodoo, and crescent moons throughout the 80s and beyond, inspiring more women in the goth rock movement to replicate Siouxsie Sioux all while critics hailed Sioux's presence as a commanding, confident force. Witches as a thematic and aesthetic influence in music continues today, with many women influenced by Nicks especially.

Florence Welch went from writing spells in notebooks as a child to performing in bellowing robes and nearly doing a witch-trial concept album with Florence and The Machine. Haim wear matching crescent-moon necklaces to mark their sisterhood, a gift from Nicks herself. Lorde's self-described "goth-witch vibe" includes an endless supply of black gowns and cascading dark hair. Witch house had its moment where bands like Salem combined references to witchcraft with dark electronic music, and its most prominent graduate Grimes has even worn the word WITCH in proud all-caps across her chest. Nicki Minaj went through a period of using a dark arts alter-ego Roman to deliver her most seething verses including on Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy standout "Monster" in 2010, at the Grammys in 2012, and on Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded that same year. Courtney Love has sung of witches as women of power throughout her work with Hole, even covering Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" and Donovan's "Season of the Witch." "They want to burn the witches inside us," she sings of riot grrrl haters on the 1993 Hole B-side "20 Years in The Dakota."

With all the mythos surrounding witch imagery, it's easy to forget that hundreds of thousands of real-life women were burned at the stake, accused, tortured and murdered because of literal witch-hunts in the Middle Ages. The "golden age" of witch-hunts ran in Europe from the late 15th Century into the 18th Century. The powder keg here was the fear-mongering Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of [the] Witches, a text written by monks in the 1480s to argue witches were a) in service of Satan, b) largely women as they were the weaker sex (Men calling women weaker? Shocker!), and c) only witch hunts could stop their rampage of death and male tears.

As noted feminist Lisa Simpson once mused, "Why is it that when a women is confident and powerful, they call her a witch?" It's coded sexism. The victims of the witch-hunt boom and its echoes including the Salem Witch Trials were rarely spiritually witches. In colonial North America, women who were accused of being witches often defied gender roles and ideals prescribed to them, including not having children, being elderly, associating with independent women, or being "overly" argumentative and stubborn. While the bulk of witch hunts largely ended after Britain's Witchcraft Act of 1735, their toxic cocktail of sexism and spirituality proved to be lasting: women in tribal communities in India who owned land or found economic success on their own have been targeted and murdered by men under the excuse that they were witches as late as the 2000s. Come on.

Even today, men in music continue to hound women who threaten their strength through witch imagery. The esteemed ranks of Chris Brown, Imagine Dragons and Tech N9ne are just some of the men who've put out a song called "Curse(d)" in which they detail women with an emotional or sexual hold over them. Women who weaken men are also transmogrified into the inhuman on songs including Nine Inch Nails' "Reptile," a scornful description of an ex-lover. Relentless rumors that Stevie Nicks was a "real" witch in the vein of Middle Ages caricature even frightened Nicks away from wearing her signature black dresses briefly in the 80s, a strain of gossip that persists today in the form of outlandish conspiracy theory videos claiming that independent women in music from Nicki Minaj to Lorde are demon-possessed satanic witches.

"A lot of people scared me," Nicks told Entertainment Tonight in 1983. "And that's really unfair to me, I think, for people – other people – to conjure up their ideas of what I am or what I believe in." Gossip quick hits often knock women like Rihanna by saying they've put men "under her spell." As writer Kimberly Ballard points out on Unrecorded, writers especially bullied Courtney Love by characterizing her as a witch to attack her relationship with Kurt Cobain, "saying Love had 'bewitched' Cobain and 'put a spell on him'…As a woman who fought stereotypes and consistently shrugged off expectations, it's fitting that Love became the main suspect in the witch-hunt following Cobain's death." Love uses witch and bitch interchangeably as Grace Jones, Yoko Ono, and others did before her, a nod to the coded sexism the label of witch was intended to enforce.

Jones lives comfortably in her androgyny and assertiveness even when she's up against sexist interviewers. As she shares in the 2013 doc In Your Dreams, Nicks ultimately chose to not have children to put music first. Grimes is her own producer, owning her weirdness while brushing off patronizing requests from men to help with her music. Florence Welch and Lorde have spoken of their childhood or adulthood female friendships as covens, signifying strong bonds between strong women. When men are still reaching to prescribe the success of women in music to a man and patronizing or doubtful of women who've made it on their own, we need these women promoting independence, defiance, and sisterhood as virtues to inspire other girls to come together and claim their rightful space in music. Symbolically, if being a witch means belonging to that kind of community of women, then Jones is right to sing "Being a witch is what I'd rather be."

Jill Krajewski is a witchy Scorpio. Follow her on Twitter.

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Like most people my age, I first became aware of Fleetwood Mac circa 1997, when the band was doing publicity for the reunion album The Dance by appearing on shows like VH1’s Behind the Music. The narrative superimposed on the band by that show, and by most rock-star biographies, is always the same: Success is followed by too much success and a riveting flameout, which is followed by treatment and recovery, which is followed by a triumphant reunion. Through this lens, Nicks’s story is simple and romantic: She and Buckingham, young and in love, made beautiful music together until the pressures of fame and success, plus drugs and suspicious minds, tore them apart circa Rumours. They can still summon vestiges of their love onstage, the story goes.

Another aspect of Nicks' magical energy is her lyrical content. Her songs often delve into themes of love, heartbreak, and self-discovery, exploring the depths of human emotions. Many of her lyrics are imbued with poetic imagery and metaphorical language, further enhancing the enchanting quality of her music. Nicks' magical energy is also reflected in her stage presence and performance style. She has an undeniable charisma that captivates audiences, making them feel as though they are under her spell. Her graceful movements and expressive gestures add an element of drama and intensity to her performances, creating an immersive experience for those in attendance. In conclusion, Stevie Nicks' magical energy is an integral part of her artistic expression. Through her mysterious persona, haunting vocals, poetic lyrics, and captivating performances, she transports listeners to a world filled with enchantment and emotion. It is this unique combination of elements that has solidified Nicks as a legendary figure in the music industry and continues to captivate audiences to this day..

Reviews for "Stevie Nicks' Enigmatic Charm: Exploring the Source of her Magical Energy"

1. John - 2 stars

I was really looking forward to "Stevie Nicks Magical Energy" but unfortunately, it didn't live up to the hype for me. The show felt disorganized and lacked coherence, making it difficult to follow the storyline. The performances were also underwhelming - while Nicks is undeniably talented, her energy seemed forced and it didn't feel like she gave her best on stage. Overall, I left the show feeling disappointed and wishing I had spent my money on a different concert.

2. Sarah - 3 stars

As a long-time fan of Stevie Nicks, I was excited to see "Stevie Nicks Magical Energy," but it fell short of my expectations. The setlist was filled with less popular songs, and while I appreciate the artist's desire to showcase her less-known work, it left the audience wanting more of her iconic hits. Additionally, the sound quality was poor, making it difficult to fully enjoy the performances. Although I still love Stevie Nicks as an artist, this particular show failed to capture her true magical energy that I was hoping for.

3. Mark - 2 stars

"Stevie Nicks Magical Energy" was a letdown for me. The show lacked energy and seemed to drag on without any exciting moments. While Nicks' voice is still impressive, her performance felt lackluster, like she was just going through the motions. The stage production was also unimaginative, with minimal props and effects, which added to the overall dull atmosphere. I expected more from such an influential and iconic artist, and unfortunately, this concert just didn't deliver.

4. Samantha - 2.5 stars

I had high hopes for "Stevie Nicks Magical Energy," but it didn't leave me feeling enchanted. The concert lacked a cohesive theme or narrative, making it difficult to fully engage with the show. Though Nicks' voice is unique and captivating, the performances felt repetitive and predictable. Furthermore, the sound quality was subpar, making it hard to fully appreciate her talent. Unfortunately, this concert failed to live up to its magical promises and left me feeling underwhelmed.

Stevie Nicks' Spellbinding Presence: The Energy Behind her Musical Legacy