Stevie Nicks Just Dropped An Abortion Rights Anthem
Stevie Nicks Just Dropped An Abortion Rights Anthem
We have no choice but to stan.
Living legend and be-caped fashion icon Stevie Nicks has graciously blessed us all this fine day with a brand new jam — and it is a song about abortion rights!
In a post on Instagram, Nicks explained that she wrote the song, “The Lighthouse” after Roe was overturned, because she needed a way to fight back.
I wrote this song a few months after Roe v. Wade was overturned. It seemed like overnight, people were saying “what can we, as a collective force, do about this…” For me, it was to write a song.
It took a while because I was on the road. Then early one morning I was watching the news on TV and a certain newscaster said something that felt like she was talking to me~ explaining what the loss of Roe v. Wade would come to mean. I wrote the song the next morning and recorded it that night.
That was September 6, 2022. I have been working on it ever since. I have often said to myself, “This may be the most important thing I ever do. To stand up for the women of the United States and their daughters and granddaughters ~ and the men that love them.
This is an anthem.
Nicks is backed up by Sheryl Crow, who also co-produced the song, on guitar and vocals. I am going to choose to believe that this is in some way her way of making up for having done that one song with Kid Rock.
The video itself features Stevie Nicks dramatically swanning around a dark lighthouse looking like a glamorous witch, like she does, interspersed with images of abortion rights protesters and historical feminist images.
I have my scars, you have yours
Don’t let them, take your power
Don’t leave it alone in the final hours
They’ll take your soul, they’ll take your power
Don’t close your eyes and hope for the best
The dark is out there
The light is going fast
Until the final hours
Your life’s forever changed
And all the rights that you had yesterday
Are taken away
And now you’re afraid
You should be afraid
Should be afraid
Because everything I fought for
Long ago in a dream, is gone
Someone said
The dream is not over
The dream has just begun
Or
Is it a nightmare
Is it a lasting scar
It is unless you save it
And that’s that
Unless you stand up
And take it back
And take it back
It’s actually kind of interesting that Nicks’ newer songs — like her 2020 releases “Show Them The Way” and a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” have all been so political, given that Fleetwood Mac was notably pretty apolitical back in the day (apart from “Don’t Stop” being Bill Clinton’s campaign theme song) — which I think is part of why, at that time, a lot of “serious” music people kind of saw them as being too commercial or whatever. My mom once explained that it took her a while to appreciate them because they were what “straight” people were into at the time (a term she kind of used like we use “basic”), which shocked me because I was 17 and completely obsessed with Rumours at the time.
Allow me to leave you with the best of all possible Fleetwood Mac jams, “Silver Springs.” Because we deserve that today.
Here’s hoping that we kill the filibuster and make abortion rights the law of the land, and that you all someday get your own temperature-controlled cape rooms, or whatever your version of a temperature-controlled cape room is. (Mine is a temperature-controlled cape room)
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Thanks Robyn. I'm saving this page for a couple more listens this week.
I'm in tune with your mom. Fleetwood Mac is what the jocks and the cheerleaders at my highschool were into while I was discovering the New York Dolls and Patti Smith. Still not much of a fan, but I respect this gesture enough to give it a listen.