Let's talk about... RHIANNON

[daniellaaarisen]

Okay, shoot me. I understand. You are all thinking, "this song has been explained in interviews a thousand and one times and yet Dani STILL posts a thread about it simply because she wants to thrust her obsession against the helpless board."

However, how much do we REALLY know? The name was inspired from The Triad, the character sprouting from a series of myths that claimed she was "the maker of birds, and the goddess of steeds; she's the protector of horses. Her music is like a pain pill. When you wake up and hear her birds singing her little song, the danger will have passed" (Nicks 1996, inherownwords.com).

That is essentially all we know as concrete fact. Granted, this explanation is much more detailed and specific than any other self-professed origin of a Nicks work, therefore losing much of the puzzling appeal that drives avid fans to explicate any further meaning. For many, Rhiannon was written about a Welsh witch. It is as simple as that, and the song merely captures Stevie's dramatiziced and partially fabricated "story" of a gothic legend. Beautiful, no doubt, but simple.

For me, "Rhiannon" is one of Stevie's most complex and intiguing works because of a single staple aspect of any piece:

To some degree, a writer is within each and every one of his or her works, despite how hard one tries to cover it. I believe "Rhiannon" is as autobiographical as it is fictional because in illustrating the characteristics she finds most alluring, Stevie illustrates herself.



I will write a line-by-line analysis of the song tomorrow, but for now, write your own responses and consider the following quote, especially given the time period in which "Rhiannon" was written and recorded:

"So it is ~ it's just about, it's just about a very mystical woman that is finds it very, very hard to be tied down in any kind of way ~ and she's uplifting all through the song. That's ~ that's what I wanted to get and that's what the band got really well was that uplifting of wings kind of a feel, you know ~ when you feel like you see a seagull and she's, she's like lifting up. Well, that's, that's Rhiannon. Rhiannon ~ yeah ~ she's moving up."