Various songs have been dedicated to love, as the theme has been widely explored throughout music history. While most tracks appreciate the beauty of love by describing how magical it is, the reality is perhaps somewhat different. After all, one of the primary aims of music is to romanticize our experiences and feelings.
Thus, some songs have also navigated love in a much darker light after being inspired by breakups and tragic stories of impossible love affairs. These tracks often don’t have the uplifting and positive melodies that generic love songs have, but it can be said that they are more realistic in their portrayal of love.
Stevie Nicks, however, was determined that her song could both be magical and embrace the reality of an impossible love. The singer believed love was magical but grasping and conveying that wonder can be challenging. Nonetheless, her strong feelings for her bandmate Mick Fleetwood which could never lead to a loving relationship, gave her the necessary inspiration.
The Song Stevie Nicks Dedicated To Her Impossible Love
Stevie Nicks had various relationships throughout her career, but the most well-known one was with Lindsey Buckingham. The couple had joined Fleetwood Mac together and shared a natural bond. However, the pair broke up after they were recruited into the band, which caused a lot of turmoil.
They both channeled their feelings into music, and many of the songs in Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ album reflect how the musicians felt during this period. Even though Stevie Nicks has often admitted that she wrote several songs following her breakup with Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie’s song about exploring an impossible love affair wasn’t about her ex.
The bandmate she had desperate feelings for was Mick Fleetwood. The frontwoman had a crush on Mick, and it was rumored that they had a fling or two, but in the end, they couldn’t be together due to various complicated reasons. Stevie would discuss her relationship with Mick to Entertainment Weekly in 2009 and disclose that she had written the song ‘Beauty and the Beast‘ for him.
“It was definitely about Mick, but it’s also based on the 1946 Jean Cocteau movie,” said Stevie, admitting that her feelings for the band’s founder also inspired the song. “I first saw it on TV one night when Mick and I were first together, and I always thought of Mick as being sort of ‘Beauty and the Beast-esque,’ because he’s so tall and he had beautiful coats down to here and clothes made by little fairies up in the attic.”
She continued, “I always thought he was that character in a lot of ways. And also, it matched our story because Mick and I could never be. A, because Mick was married and then divorced, and that was not good, and B, because of Fleetwood Mac.”
For Stevie, the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast‘ portrayed her impossible love for Mick Fleetwood. If she were to date Mick, she knew that would complicate things for both Fleetwood Mac, including her ex-boyfriend Lindsey. It also didn’t help that Mick eventually fell in love with Nicks’ best friend, Sara. So, it seems like Stevie thought the best thing she could do was write a song about her love and move on.
