All time 100 best singers
 

Just saw this in this week's HUMO magazine (belgian weekly):

quote (free translation)
no. 96 : STEVIE NICKS
At the age of 4, Stevie Nicks already sang duets with her grandfather, an unsuccesfull country singer.
It was her smoky,country voice, always filled with emotion, that helped resurrect Fleetwood Mac - who at that time was a struggling
blues-rock band. Together with ex-lover Lindsey Buckingham, Nicks enriched the Fleetwood sound with ghostly harmonies, and
also added a whiff of fallen-angels-glamour.That the band as well as Nicks herself would eventually break down only added that something
extra to her stricking vocals.
3 most essential tracks:
Sara (with Fleetwood Mac)
Dreams (with Fleetwood Mac)
Rooms on Fire
unquote

Considering most people in Belgium have no clue who Stevie Nicks is, i would say she has'nt done half bad !

that is pretty awesome. I love how ROF gets so much attention in other countries.

All I can say is "WOW".. this is pretty exciting!! She hasn't done badly at all! GOOOOO STEVIE! :nod:

I know.... Why is that?

Because outside of the states it was one of her biggest hits. I know that in NZ ROF and SDMHA are the only two solo singles that charted in the top 10 here...

Well yeah, I know it was a huge hit outside the US, but I was just wondering why that was. Know what I mean?

I don't know - why was it not as successful in the US? It is an unanswerable question...

Because God works in mysterious ways, my chylde~

Three reasons. One, because it was the first single released by a member of Fleetwood Mac after the huge success of the Tango album. And that album really was massive for the two years prior to that, especially in Europe, which meant that a lot of radio stations put it on their playlists where before Stevie had never got that much radio play in Europe. Secondly, because she did more promotion for The Other Side Of The Mirror album here than she ever did for her previous albums. She even appeared on UK TV several times! Third, because Steveee is ~magick~ in all her finery.

Funny that we're talking about this now, because I had a friend come up to me a few days ago, and he was asking me about this hit Stevie had in the late 80s. He was like, before we didn't even know she had a solo career, and all of a sudden she was everywhere. Bad Stevie. I think if she has just worked a little extra hard at it, she would be coming over here more often. TOSOTM was not her finest work at all, yet it still garnered quite some attention here, of course riding on the coat tails of the massive success of TITN.

Well, why was Tango so popular abroad? :laugh:

I agree Vanessa I definitely think Bella Donna in particular could have been equally huge here, granted she probably didn't have the time to fully promote it because she had to run back to the Mac. At the same time she's never seemed that interested in taking the time to tour or promote her music outside of the States, which is odd.


Because it's a great album and had five hit singles.

5 singles!! :shocked:

ok there was
Big Love
Everywhere
Seven Wonders
Little Lies

what was 5!!!!
Family Man? [thats the only other music video of tango ive seen, but i know that Isnt it Midnight <3 was released in England....]

sooo. confusing.

In the UK, it went:

Big Love
(highest chart position: 9)

Seven Wonders
(highest chart position: 56)

Little Lies
(highest chart position: 5)

Family Man
(highest chart position: 54)

Everywhere
(highest chart position: 4 - the Mac's highest charting UK single since 1969)

Isn't It Midnight
(highest chart position: 60)

Tango was so successful because it was commercial and mainstream. People seem to like commercial and mainstream.

As for Rooms On Fire...we have Top Of The Pops to thank for that. It was Stevie's ONLY top 20 UK single and the album became her only UK top 10 album (Bella Donna just missed it - scraping in at number 11). At this time, MTV was not widely available in the UK and so TOTP was the only source of new music. Her performance on that brought the single up from something like number 45 I think it was - upto number 21 and eventually number 16.

Thank you for that info!! I had no idea.:nod:

Oh and by the way, I love your sig.

Those all make sense. Plus, I think the way that song was done was very Euro-sounding. They thought that style sounded cool. That entire CD has a very Euro sound to it, apart from the fact some of it was recorded in England.

Do you think so? I don't, but I'm not sure. Didn't seem as if SN or FM was terrifically popular in 1981 on the European music scene, & "Bella Donna" sounds so ... '70s -- nothing at all like the stuff that was all the rage in 1981, all those bands that used Oberheims & Prophets. I think the Europeans thought Fleetwood Mac was pretty dunce cappy at that point.

Yes, but lots of songs that are commercial and mainstream aren't as successful as TITN. It was a combination of factors, such as radioplay, the huge European tour, the fact that MTV Europe was just taking off and played Big Love and the other videos all the time, and the fact that they promoted the hell out of thing. Also it's pretty standard that most of the best selling albums of all time have four or more hit singles. Tango fits into that nicely.


Actually that's not completely true as back then TOTP didn't play songs outside the top 40, so your information is wrong, it was at least inside the top 40 for her to play the show and that was due to the fact that Rooms On Fire was played all the time on Radio One. Still that doesn't explain why Rooms or TOSOTM was huge in Europe (which is what was asked) as TOTP is a UK show. Stevie actually came to Europe, gave press and TV interviews, and as reward the record company promoted the hell out of the thing, there were posters and ads for it everywhere. Previous Stevie albums didn't get the same support from the artist or record company in Europe.

That's probably true. It certainly didn't sound out of place on the radio at that time.

Maybe but most people don't remember that Tom Petty was pretty popular here in the late 70s (but largely ignored for most of the 80s for some reason) and Stop Draggin' My Heart Around could have been promoted off the back of that. The image of Stevie in her hippy ballet gear probably didn't help though, the UK certainly wasn't hippy friendly by then. I don't know about the rest of Europe.
Also the Mac were still huge, in the UK at least, in 1981. They actually played six sold out dates at Wembley Arena the year before Bella Donna came out. I've been to Wembley Arena, and believe me that is hugely impressive.

Well, all of the press interviews and things, if this was around 1989, did Stevie seem really out of it, or not?

Well, in retrospect, having seen her interviewed before and since, she was a little more spacey in TSOTM interviews. And of course there's the infamous Annie Nightingale interview during which she apparently burst into tears about wanting to have a baby. That part wasn't broadcast though, but it was reported in the press. I can't imagine her doing something like that now.

Also I worked with the guy who interviewed her for the 1989 (or maybe 1990?) Record Mirror feature, Robin Smith, which I think is on the Nicks Fix, and he said she was kinda out-there at the time. I think Stevie was quite removed from reality in lots of different senses back then.

Tango and TOSOTM is totally my era. I feel like I'm an expert on it!:laugh:

You wouldn't happen to have any youtube links would you? I think it is so sad, that she was so flat during these years.......:distress:

She wasn't really flat during those interviews, she was still sweet and funny, just a little more emotional maybe.
It's the Timespace era that's really scary. She definitely was a bit monotone and out of it during those interviews. Plus she looked terrible.

True, yeah, she wasn't quite as into the fog in 1989. I'll have to watch some interviews on youtube.