Why Stevie Nicks Should Be Your Career Success Spirit Guide.

[BlueDenimLamp]

Why Stevie Nicks Should Be Your Career Success Spirit Guide...Forbes

Unless you’ve been living under a pop cultural rock (they sold a lot of those in the 70s), you’ve probably noticed that famed Fleetwood Mac frontwoman Stevie Nicks has been experiencing quite a career renaissance lately. She made a couple of buzzed-about cameos on last season’s American Horror Story and is mentoring Adam Levine’s team on this season of The Voice. Fleetwood Mac is out on tour and last week Nicks released her own album of original work culled from the last 40 years of her career, 24 Karat Gold – Songs From The Vault, the making of which is the subject of a documentary currently streaming on Netflix. There’s even an exhibit of her daily self portraits on show in New York. Stevie Nicks has become the media darling of the moment, in part because she’s happy to discuss her personal and professional lives without a trace of self consciousness. There’s some serious gold(dust) in what she’s been sharing. You might not own a shawl or ever be mistaken for a white witch and, like me, you may not even have alive during the Rumors era, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a career lesson or two from this music icon.

Authenticity Over Relatability

There’s very little that’s relatable about Stevie Nicks. She dresses like a grown-up version of The Little Match Girl and she writes songs about mystical women, magic and doomed affairs. She’s had a string of said affairs with some of classic rock’s leading men, she’s been hooked on both cocaine and Klonopin and been parodied on South Park. She doesn’t own a cell, preferring to reach out to fans with handwritten notes that her people scan and upload to her website. And yet, she’s an inspiration to young artists of the moment such as as Haim and Taylor Swift and has the kind of fanbase that inspires an annual event like Night of 1000 Stevies, now in its 24th year. In a time when ‘relatable’ is the standard by which we evaluate the quality of artistic work and women in particular are encouraged to frame their personal narratives as universally applicable (see Lena Dunham’s oeuvre or Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In for reference), Nicks is thoroughly unrelatable. She’s enigmatic, eccentric and authentic and it is, paradoxically enough, this refusal to make her work or herself more accessible that garners industry respect and fan adoration.

Specialization

When you find the area in which you excel, the type of work you’re drawn to or the signature style that captures your personality, why mess with a good thing? Stevie Nicks has spent her career focused on getting better at being Stevie Nicks . Save for some minor hairstyle changes, her iconic look has remained the same since she joined Fleetwood Mac. She hasn’t done a hip hop collaboration or released a country album. She hasn’t segued into politics or acting (one-offs like her American Horror Story appearances aside). This isn’t stagnation so much as specialization. Stevie Nicks is a specialist who has spent decades refining her craft and continues to do so — she’s adamant about the benefits of working with a vocal coach and has aspirations for a movie based on the song Rhiannon, for example. No one occupies the same cultural niche that she does. She has staked out a specific spot on the musical landscape and she owns it. This unwavering attention is at odds with a business culture in which startups pivot on a quarterly basis and young workers are derided as fickle job hoppers. You can’t get good at anything if you don’t stick with it and sticking with it often takes a lot longer than you’d think. That’s not boring, that’s laudable.

Setting Expectations

There’s a great scene in the In Your Dreams documentary where Stevie Nicks is discussing collaboration. She talks over a song draft with Lindsey Buckingham and he tells her that it can’t jump from the first to the second person and it would be a stronger song if she fixed this issue. She smiles brightly and asks, “Would you tell Bob Dylan that?” You can see Buckingham’s shoulders droop as he knows there’s no way he’s winning this argument. Ask and suggest, Nicks says and she’ll happily consider input, but try to tell her what she “should” do creatively and you’ll hit a wall. Nicks has wielded that same iron fist in a lace glove throughout her career. In conversation with NPR’s Ann Powers at SXSW 2013, she talks about how she and Christine McVie refused to settle for second tier status in the male-dominated rock scene of the 70s and, more broadly, how to teach others how to treat you:

“So, our boys never went anywhere without us. And we were always invited to the party. But it was because we demanded that from the very beginning. ‘Cause you know, you can’t just, like, be a wimp and then a year and a half or two years later decide to not be a wimp anymore. Because people will always treat you like a wimp once they have decided that’s what you are. So you can never, ever be that. You have to be strong and tough and intelligent and smart and kind of plan out what you’re going to say and know who you are. So that people will get that right away. Because then they’re always going to be great to you. And they’re always going to treat you with respect. And that’s what you want, because then they listen to you. And then they listen to your songs. And then they give you a chance. Otherwise, you get nowhere.”

Self Reflection

Flavorwire poked fun at recent interviews in which Nicks has been cheerfully candid in her personal oversharing, but the way in which she’s able to relate decades-old anecdotes from which the patina of scandal has long since worn off is decidedly refreshing. Stevie Nicks is nothing if not introspective and she’s unmatched at conveying artistic vulnerability without sacrificing personal strength. She’s frank about poor choices she’s made (the cocaine and Klonopin years, her affair with Mick Fleetwood), circumspect about her often tumultuous relationship with bandmate and former flame Lindsey Buckingham and not averse to writing songs about tough love wisdom she’s received from friends. She’s also devoted to practices that keep her in touch with and allow her to document her own creativity, whether that’s the paper journal she’s fastidious about writing in or the daily self portraits that she’s snapped for decades. You don’t have to scrawl out leatherbound tomes of poetry a la Ms. Nicks, but self knowledge – in whatever form you pursue it – is the key ingredient in choosing a career path, a lifestyle and the people you’ll share them with.

[gssmith]

Good advise. I'm about to be a boss so I read Queen Elizabeth I, CEO of an empire by Alan Axlrod. Stevie is great, but Elizabeth was the boss.

[paleshadow]

Fun article, although the author did confuse some of the documentaries.

[DauphineMarie]

Originally Posted by gssmith

Good advise. I'm about to be a boss so I read Queen Elizabeth I, CEO of an empire by Alan Axlrod. Stevie is great, but Elizabeth was the boss.

Haha no way! I read that book. Very fascinating. Ol' Bess did do a bang up job, yes?
I really love the part about authenticity over relatability. If you are trying to excel anywhere, being average and "relatable" is not the way to go, I've learned that first hand.