Even the non-singles on the album’s first side (“Wild Heart,” “Gate and Garden” and the surprisingly driving rocker “Enchanted”) have strong melodies.
STEVIE NICKS CRYSTAL VISIONS ZIP MAC
It’s not Bella Donna (though it clearly tries to repeat the formula of that album, using many of the same players – the Heartbreakers, Wachtel, Bittan, Felder, and Kunkel – and even including another Tom Petty duet), but Nicks’ sophomore solo outing is still excellent for a little over half of its running time, thanks largely to another great set of singles, including the heated disco-rock of the Top Ten hit “Stand Back” (featuring an uncredited Prince on synthesizer!) and two truly underrated gems in the synth-driven “If Anyone Falls” and the lovely “Nightbird,” a duet with Sandy Stewart (who co-wrote the cut and also co-wrote “If Anyone Falls” and the very underrated Fleetwood Mac hit “Seven Wonders”). Actually, the only cut that falls flat is the album-closing “The Highwayman.” The album never quite has the same magic as Nicks’ best sides with Fleetwood Mac – chalk that up to the absence of Lindsey Buckingham, who always had a gift for crafting clever arrangements for Stevie’s songs and injecting them with all kinds of ear candy – but the songs are first-rate and the cast of players – including Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, the Eagles’ Don Felder, the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan, Russ Kunkel, Little Feat’s Bill Payne, and Elton John guitarist Davey Johnstone – is a great one. There are quite a few memorable non-singles here as well, namely “Think about It,” “Kind of Woman,” “How Still My Love,” and the fantastic album-opening title cut (which really belongs on a Nicks best-of package but somehow always gets left out). There’s also a fourth Top 40 hit here as well, the oft-forgotten and seldom-heard “After the Glitter Fades,” one of Nicks’ most underrated singles. There are quite a few major hits here, including the haunting Tom Petty duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” the lovely country-styled Don Henley duet “Leather and Lace” (actually written with Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter in mind), and the hard-rocking “Edge of Seventeen” (featuring an iconic guitar riff from Waddy Wachtel that would go on decades later to be sampled in the Destiny’s Child song “Bootylicious”).
Produced by Jimmy Iovine (best known at this point for producing the Patti Smith Group’s Easter and Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes), this disc is roughly half-comprised of older songs that were never used on another project (“Think about It,” in fact, was first recorded during the sessions for Rumours but missed the final cut) and half-comprised of newly-written originals. Nicks’ first full-length outing outside Fleetwood Mac remains her finest hour as a solo artist.
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