Nicks wrote “Crying in the Night” before Fleetwood Mac was on her radar, during a time when she and Buckingham were trying desperately to make their own musical dreams come true. She was hopping between jobs—waiting tables at the Copper Penny, cleaning their producer’s house—keeping their lives together while Buckingham got stoned and worked on music with his buddies. Writing about an evil woman who holds all the power in a relationship must have been cathartic. All these years later, “Crying in the Night” stands as her first classic. –Mark Richardson

Listen: YouTube

“Frozen Love”

Buckingham Nicks (1973)

Buckingham Nicks was a critical and commercial failure, and Polydor Records dropped the duo shortly after its release. Nicks went back to waiting tables while Buckingham worked on music at home. One night in December 1974, Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood visited Sound City Studios, where Buckingham and Nicks had recorded; to demonstrate the studio’s power, producer Keith Olsen played him the Buckingham Nicks closer “Frozen Love.” The seven-minute folk-rock opus is indeed a flashy technical achievement, balancing strings, synth, and guitar across three separate musical movements. But even as these parts converge and Nicks and Buckingham trade off fervent vocals, their lyrics paint an intimate image of a relationship gone cold.

Later that month, Bob Welch became the latest in a long line of Fleetwood Mac guitarists to quit the band. So Mick Fleetwood asked Buckingham to replace him; Buckingham said he and Nicks were a “package deal.” (Fleetwood had already taken an interest in Nicks, anyway, after he’d noticed her rehearsing at Sound City.) Thanks to “Frozen Love,” two L.A. romantics flopped their way into a British blues-rock group. –Marc Hogan

Listen: YouTube

“Rhiannon”

Fleetwood Mac (1975)

Stevie Nicks has always been transfixed by fantasy. After reading Mary Bartlet Leader’s novel Triad—about a woman named Rhiannon who possesses another woman, manifesting as her inner darkness—Nicks was inspired to write a song about that mystical struggle. (She later learned of the Welsh witch Rhiannon, which made the name even more fitting.) “Rhiannon” became her breakout single with Fleetwood Mac and the origin of the pagan goddess identity she’d carry throughout her career.

Nicks’ vocal range is on full display here: She balances mysteriousness and hopefulness, oscillating between husky and honeyed with spellbinding command. As she cries out like a woman possessed, the production transitions from gloom to radiance, Christine McVie’s subtle keyboard playing flickering like fireflies. Embodying Rhiannon illustrated Nicks’ empathy: The Rhiannon of Triad was evil, but Nicks never saw her that way. She fell in love with the name, only seeing a woman who was trapped and isolated. Her “Rhiannon” is a myth of her own making. –Sheldon Pearce

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“Landslide”

Fleetwood Mac (1975)

The great theme of Stevie Nicks’ music is time. It casts spells, it transforms children into adults, it bridges unlikely connections between old Welsh witches and modern-day seekers. It is the focal point of one of her most hallowed meditations, “Landslide,” a song she wrote when she was 27 and on the brink of giving up songwriting forever. Buckingham Nicks had just flopped, and the duo’s relationship was looking like it would suffer the same fate. Her parents, who did not understand why she was still in Los Angeles chasing her impossible dreams, offered a time limit: “Give it six more months… and if it doesn’t happen, go back and finish college.” Tick, tick, tick.

“Landslide” didn’t come easily: She cried while working on it. She was thinking about her recently deceased grandfather. She was thinking about the mute, indifferent mountains she’d asked for answers on a recent trip to Aspen. She was tripping on acid—the first and only time in her life, she swears—and listening obsessively to Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, in awe of its poetry. These experiences piled up like a snowdrift; they eventually avalanched in an incredible feeling of release. And then she was finally ready to do it: to write a song so perfect, it can still stop time. –Lindsay Zoladz