The Stevie Nicks Songs We'd LOVE to See Her Hyde Park Supporting Cast Cover
Monday, 08 July 2024
Written by Huw Baines
There’s only one Stevie Nicks, as we’re about to discover all over again when she touches down for massive shows in Dublin, Glasgow and Manchester ahead of a London headline set as part of the British Summer Time series. On July 12 at Hyde Park, Nicks will top a bill studded with women — much like Taylor Swift — whose own music owes something to the trail she blazed while fronting Fleetwood Mac or, later, drawing up blueprints for high-sheen pop-rock as a solo artist.
Here, we’ve engaged in a little bit of fantasy booking by mulling over the Stevie covers we’d most like to see the supporting cast – which features Brandi Carlile, Anna Calvi, Paris Paloma, Baby Queen, Nina Nesbitt, Siobhan Winifred, CATTY, Talia Rae, Stevie Bill, and Nina Versyp — fashion into their own image, from barnstorming Mac classics to killer duets. There’s only one Stevie, that’s true, but there are a lot of people out there who are walking in her footsteps.
Brandi Carlile - Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
More than 40 years on, this song still absolutely cooks. Written with Tom Petty, and the Heartbreakers’ superlative guitarist Mike Campbell, for Nicks’ 1981 solo breakout ‘Bella Donna’, Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around has become an oft-covered standard that never fails to get its hooks in. Spanning seven solo LPs and one superb turn as a member of the country supergroup the Highwomen, Carlile’s own forays into weathered Americana, plaintive folk and bristling pop-rock make her the ideal person to take on its combination of barbed cool, vocal virtuosity and simmering vulnerability. She’s got the chops and charisma to truly smoke a version of it. But who’s playing the Petty role? Well, how about Stevie herself? Wouldn’t that be fun?
Paris Paloma - Rhiannon
We’re still a little way out from the release of Paris Paloma’s first record — ‘Cacophony’ is out at the end of August — but her early singles have already shown her to be someone capable of inhabiting Nicks’ witchiest moment. Her folk-derived riffs on pop-rock are heavy on atmosphere and sharp storytelling, so there’s plenty of potential for her to tap into this Fleetwood Mac classic’s source material, bending it into a more contemporary shape. That said, her recent single Boys, Bugs, and Men has enough shuffling presence to suggest that Paloma would do just fine if she decided to stay faithful to the original.
Anna Calvi - Edge of Seventeen
With songs that are packed with vibrant, muscular, biting riffs, Calvi is one of the most compelling guitarists in indie-rock, so it’d be a total thrill to see her climb into the iconic intro of what is perhaps Nicks’s finest solo moment. The way As a Man, a highlight from Calvi’s 2018 album ‘Hunter’, plays with catch and release tension suggests she’d have plenty of fun with the song’s chorus drop, which is already a masterpiece of delayed gratification, while her own voice is a neat fit for its twisting melodies and built-in sense of drama.
Baby Queen - Seven Wonders
The hold that Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tango in the Night’ holds over modern pop is pronounced, with its sleek synths and pillowy pastel-hued production underpinning records by everyone from Haim to Shura. On the Hyde Park bill, it’s Baby Queen who’s perhaps best suited to adding some chunky modern sheen to one of its many hits. Her recent LP ‘Quarter Life Crisis’ proved her to be adept at navigating different spaces, from spiky alt-pop to straight up sugar rushes, so she’s our pick to take a run at Seven Wonders, a titanic song that (potential blasphemy ahoy!) has the ubiquitous Everywhere beaten on points every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Nina Nesbitt - Silver Springs
This is perhaps the hardest assignment of them all. This is a perfect song that has on more than one occasion been performed perfectly by Nicks, whether that’s the studio cut that was inexplicably left off ‘Rumours’ or the spine-tingling/hair-raising version from ‘The Dance’, where she famously stares a hole through Lindsey Buckingham — its intended target, naturally — as it reaches its emotional crescendo. Basically, Stevie’s a tough act to follow at the best of times, but here she’s out there on her own. But the thing uniting most great covers is an artist finding a fresh way to approach something, making it their own in the process. Enter Nina Nesbitt, whose music is defined by her subtly gritty voice and the sort of vulnerability that cuts through to the kernel of hurt at the heart of Silver Springs. In her hands it might read differently — less ‘Get that fucker, Stevie!’ and more ‘Man, this is sad.’
Stevie Nicks Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue July 09 2024 - MANCHESTER Co-op Live
Fri July 12 2024 - LONDON Hyde Park
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
