Stevie Nicks and Harry Styles have had an interesting friendship for years. They’ve looked after one another, in and out of the music business, and have sung each other’s praises.
While Styles has said Nicks is one of his biggest influences, Nicks has bestowed upon Styles the ultimate compliment. After hearing the ex-One Direction singer‘s second solo album, Fine Line, she said it sounded like The Beatles.
Stevie Nicks gave Harry Styles advice on ‘Fine Line’
During a 2020 interview with Vogue, Nicks explained what she first thought about Styles’ Fine Line. She heard some of the songs in their early stages and didn’t shy away from giving her opinions.
“Me and four of my friends sat with Harry in his living room in London and listened to it a few times before it came out,” Nicks explained. “But it wasn’t really Fine Line yet. The first time we listened to it, nobody really said anything.
“The second time everyone started to go, ‘I think this song is great, but it should be second in the sequence.’ By the third listen, it was five girls screaming, ‘Well, Harry really now, I think you need to take these four that are called Harry Songs and do this and that—’ while he’s sinking in his reclining chair thinking, ‘Are these women ever gonna leave? Thanks for your opinions, but oh, my God, stop already.’”
Nicks also suggested that Styles make a Francis Ford Coppola-like music video for “Sunflower, Vol. 6” featuring Styles as a bee who falls in love with a sunflower.
“You’re gonna be a bee, and the sunflower would be your girlfriend, and you guys would get married and live in a beehive with your little bee children,” Nicks explained to Styles. “You’d sing the lyrics ‘kiss in the kitchen like it’s a dance floor duh duh duh’ and show this entire bee relationship.” Styles just laughed at the suggestion.
When Fine Line dropped in October 2019, Nicks listened to the final product and was surprised to hear it sounded like her contemporaries.
Nicks compared Styles’ ‘Fine Line’ to The Beatles
Vogue asked Nicks what changed when she heard the final product of Fine Line. When she listened to the album’s finished form, Nicks said she heard The Beatles and even Fleetwood Mac.
“This record means a lot to me,” Nicks said. “When it was all put together, I listened and said, ‘Oh, my god, the Beatles live.’ A whole lot of people live in these songs. Fleetwood Mac lives there. I live there.
“When I listen to ‘Fine Line,’ I hear melodies that would’ve worked on ‘A Day in the Life.’ It has that same kind of complexity. I think the Beatles would’ve thought, ‘Here we’ve influenced a young man who took some incredible things from us and made them his own years and years later.’”
Listening to Styles’ “Golden,” one can also hear Nicks’ buddies, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, specifically their 1969 song “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” However, Nicks mainly heard her own band, Fleetwood Mac in Fine Line.
Nicks said ‘Fine Line’ is Styles’ ‘Rumours’
At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, Nicks posted a letter to her fans informing them that she was doing OK. She was hanging out with her goddaughters and her assistant Karen during the lockdown.
However, Fine Line was helping her get through the rough times too. In her message, Nicks wrote, “Way to go H. ~ it is your Rumours…” Vogue later asked Nicks to elaborate on what she meant.
Nicks explained, “When Harry asked me to do ‘Landslide’ with him at the Forum, I asked why, and he said, ‘Because I want you to be there. You were there for my first night at the Troubadour for the first record.’ That night I wrote him a letter that said, ‘This is your Rumours so you have to really respect it and adore it because these kinds of records sometimes don’t ever come again.’
“Fleetwood Mac went on to make many great records, but people would bet their life on the fact that Rumours was the one. And this might just be the one for Harry. We were all kind of the same age when we made Rumours. I was 28, and Lindsey [Buckingham] was 27. I actually don’t even know how old Harry is—he’s that timeless to me.”
So, Nicks is aware that she and many of her fellow rockers are Styles’ inspiration. We’re just glad Nicks and Styles can come together as friends and collaborators despite their generational gap. Although, we’re sad Styles didn’t take Nicks’ advice on “Sunflower, Vol. 6.”
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