What Genre Is Stevie Nicks? The Sound of an Underrated Rock Visionary
Updated: Sep 20
by Dave Anthony, Host
Garage to Stadiums Music History podcast
What genre is Stevie Nicks? She is primarily a rock and pop-rock artist, but her music also draws from folk, country and acoustic singer-songwriter traditions. Her work with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist ranges from the intimate storytelling of “Landslide” to the forceful rock sound of “Edge of Seventeen.” Her distinctive voice and lyrical style connect those different sounds.
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Stevie Nicks is one of the most recognizable figures in rock—her
voice, her silhouette, her mystique. Yet for all her fame and influence, she remains curiously underrated in the annals of rock history. She’s often celebrated as an icon or muse, but seldom given full credit as a groundbreaking rock performer. Look closely at her artistry, achievements, and impact, and it becomes clear that Stevie Nicks is not just a star—she is one of the most vital and enduring figures in rock. Zoë Howe, author of Visions, Dreams & Rumours: A Portrait of Stevie Nicks (available in book and audio) joined me to discuss Stevie's career and the reasons why she has been able to sustain a special place of importance for young and old fans alike.
How does Stevie Nicks Combine Rock, Pop, Folk and Country Influences ?
Stevie Nicks combines rock’s driving energy with pop melodies, folk-style acoustic storytelling and country influences. These styles emerge across different songs, connected by her distinctive voice and personal approach to songwriting.
Her musical roots reach back to childhood. In our interview, biographer Zoë Howe describes Nicks singing and harmonizing with her grandfather, A.J. Nicks, whose country-and-western repertoire introduced her to performing at around five years old.
Those country connections continued into her songwriting. Nicks envisioned Dolly Parton singing “After the Glitter Fades,” which eventually appeared on her solo debut, Bella Donna. Its country flavour also found a country audience: the single reached Billboard’s country chart. “Leather and Lace,” which Nicks recorded with Don Henley, began as a song requested by Waylon Jennings. Its intimate exchange between two voices recalls the tradition of country duets.
The acoustic arrangement and reflective storytelling of “Landslide” reveal the folk side of her sound. At the other end of the spectrum, “Edge of Seventeen,” powered by Waddy Wachtel’s driving guitar riff, demonstrates her force as a rock performer. “Stand Back,” featuring Prince’s synthesizer contribution, shows her embrace of synth-driven pop. And her massive hits for Fleetwood Mac "Rhiannon" and "Dreams" straddled the line between pop and rock.
What Did Stevie Nicks Bring to Fleetwood Mac?
Early Musicianship and Her Partnership with Lindsey Buckingham
Stevie Nicks’s musicianship can be overlooked when compared with Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar playing or Christine McVie’s keyboard skills. But, as biographer Zoë Howe points out in our interview, “she was, of course, a musician.” Nicks played guitar and some piano, and her songwriting was central to her contribution to Fleetwood Mac.
Howe also highlights the circumstances behind their different levels of instrumental development. Before their success, Nicks worked as a waitress, cleaned houses and took other jobs to help support herself and Buckingham, giving him more time to practise guitar. In Howe’s interpretation, judging their technical abilities without acknowledging that sacrifice leaves out an important part of the story.
That does not diminish Buckingham’s talent. Howe also recognizes his skill and the work he put into arranging and producing Nicks’s songs. Their partnership brought together different strengths: her songwriting, voice and performance instincts, and his instrumental and arranging abilities.
“Rhiannon,” “Landslide” and “Dreams”
Songs like “Rhiannon,” “Landslide” and “Dreams” helped define Fleetwood Mac’s hugely successful Buckingham–Nicks era, bringing Nicks’s distinctive storytelling and emotional intensity to the band’s evolving sound.
Her live performances of “Rhiannon,” often described as “a witchy exorcism,” created a new template for theatrical rock performance. See the adjacent Midnight Special YouTube clip for evidence of her channelling performance. Podcast guest Howe explained that Janis Joplin was "hugely important to Stevie. She really did adore Janis". According to Howe, Grace Slick front woman of Jefferson Airplane was another key influence
How Do Personal Experience and Myth Shape Her Songwriting?
Nicks has long been pigeonholed as mystical, ethereal, or impressionistic, but this dismisses the depth of her songwriting. Her lyrics blend autobiography and myth with an emotional candor that places her closer to a poet than typical rock lyricists.
Songs such as “Sara,” “Silver Springs,” “Gypsy,” and “Storms” are not vague mood pieces—they are intricate emotional narratives. Her ability to turn internal chaos into sweeping, cinematic stories is a rare gift in rock, and one that has not been fully appreciated by critics who misread her poetic intensity as abstraction.
Howe also explained the process behind Nicks’s poetic songwriting. She described Nicks recording thoughts and vignettes on large writing pads, then assembling those fragments into songs. That approach helps explain why the lyrics can feel both personal and cryptic, with the layered quality of poetry.
Gender, Image and Recognition in Rock
The story of rock history has long privileged male performers who exhibit aggression, virtuosity, or rebellion in conventional terms. Nicks embodied rebellion in a more complex way. She did not rely on technical flash; instead she asserted power through vulnerability, through emotional storytelling, and through a stage persona that was both mystical and unflinchingly honest.
Her visual aesthetic—shawls, chiffon, platform boots, moonlit symbolism—was once dismissed as “feminine theatrics.” Today, it is widely recognized as a groundbreaking form of identity-driven performance art.
Further, many bands have used Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album as their own blueprint. Many artists have covered classic songs from the album. For example "The Chain", one of the crown jewels of Rumours has inspired some unforgettable tributes from modern British indie royalty. First, Mumford and Sons brought an epic, 20-piece ensemble to the stage for a sweeping live performance. Then came Florence and The Machine, whose frontwoman Florence Welch loves the track so much she crowned it her all-time favorite song in a 2024 interview with The New York Times Style Magazine.
Tori Amos told CNN in an interview regarding the making of her 2002 record Scarlet's Walk, “I was kind of studying all the great '70s records for this album. It's patterned more after classic song structure – Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Neil Young's Harvest…"
Even today, many young artists like Swift and Harry Styles have openly worshipped Stevie and performed alongside her. Styles even joined her onstage at her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction to perform the Tom Petty vocal part of their hit "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" as shown in the YouTube clip below.
What Makes Stevie Nicks’s Voice Distinctive?
Stevie Nicks doesn’t possess a traditional powerhouse range; what she does possess is one of the most distinctive vocal signatures in rock history. Her rasp, texture, and phrasing are instantly recognizable and deeply evocative. What makes her voice underrated is that critics once judged her for what she wasn’t, rather than for what she was. She isn’t Ann Wilson or Janis Joplin. Instead, she is a vocalist who can turn a lyric into a living emotional experience. Onstage, she reshapes songs to fit the emotional truth of the moment—stretching syllables, deepening resonance, and transforming her performances into cathartic rituals.
How Did Stevie Nicks Develop Her Solo Sound?
Zoë Howe explained that a driving force behind Stevie launching a solo career was the reality that Fleetwood Mac had three strong songwriters and limited album space for each writer, while Stevie had songs accumulating through the years. Nicks’s solo career remains one of the most successful of any artist who came from a major band, yet it’s often treated as a footnote rather than a breakthrough. Her run of solo albums—Bella Donna, The Wild Heart, Rock a Little, and The Other Side of the Mirror—influenced the sound of female-fronted pop-rock for decades.
Her solo songbook: rock anthems and synth-driven pop
“Edge of Seventeen” showcases Nicks’s driving rock sound, while “Stand Back” embraces synthesizer-led pop. In our interview, we discuss the influence of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” and Zoë Howe highlights Prince’s participation in the recording of “Stand Back.” These contrasting arrangements demonstrate how Nicks could explore different sounds without losing her distinctive musical identity.
"Rooms on Fire” showcases her ability to blend autobiographical reflection with sweeping emotional production. These works cement her not just as a band member, but as a creative force in her own right.
Why Does Stevie Nicks’s Influence Endure?
Few rock performers have remained culturally relevant across five decades without compromising their identity. Nicks continues to influence fashion, songwriting, and the visual language of performance. Younger artists cite her as a beacon of emotional storytelling, feminine strength, and artistic authenticity. Zoë Howe cited Harry Styles as someone that Nicks has taken under her wing. The young star Olivia Rodrigo recently invited Nicks on stage to perform "Landslide" with her at the all-women Daisy Chain Fields music festival in 2026 in Irvine, California. During the 2024 "The Eras Tour" Taylor Swift gave an emotional on-stage tribute to Nicks, dedicating a surprise performance of her song "Clara Bow" (in which Stevie is cited in the lyrics) to her while Nicks watched from the audience.
Her ability to confront personal demons openly—from addiction to heartbreak—has made her a symbol of resilience and survival. Her stories resonate because she never pretended to be untouchable; instead, she embraced imperfection as part of her art. As Zoë Howe offered a further perspective: "In a nutshell, Stevie Nicks has had this lifelong commitment to creativity, to self-empowerment, to always moving forward and, you know, forging a more magical life".
Stevie Nicks is underrated not because her fame is lacking, but because her artistry is still misunderstood. Rock history often exalts technical precision and masculine bravado. Nicks offered something else: emotional alchemy, poetic vulnerability, and mythic self-invention. She made rock more expansive, more imaginative, more emotionally honest.
Her contributions—musical, visual, lyrical, cultural—are foundational to the genre. Stevie Nicks is not merely an icon—she is one of rock’s most consequential performers. History is still catching up to her, but when the story of rock is fully told, her place near the top will be undeniable.
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