The vital songwriting lesson Joni Mitchell taught Stevie Nicks
Every artist is the manifestation of their favourite influences, those whom they have taken tricks of the trade from and incorporated into their own act. As much as musicians may use their set of inspirations to create an entirely new sound, like the Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, she still stumbled upon her unique artistry by studying a number of others meticulously.
Joni Mitchell is a favourite of Nicks, but the Fleetwood Mac vocalist couldn’t be accused of attempting to rip off the legendary singer-songwriter. Both are incredibly different from a musical perspective; nevertheless, she learned a specific trait from pouring countless hours of her life into listening to Mitchell’s oeuvre and learning one vital skill that she absorbed, one which would likely not be noticed by fans.
As an artist, Nicks listens to music with a different level of consciousness than the average person on the street, who is happy to get whisked away by a beautiful melody that allows them to temporarily escape the mundanity of life. Instead, the Fleetwood Mac icon treats the art of songwriting like a scientific formula and digs deep to discover what makes their work irresistible.
Over the course of her career, Mitchell has established herself as a one-off who can tackle subjects that would make many artists run away in fear. More impressively, rarely is a word wasted from a songwriting perspective, and she can express the same level of storytelling that many authors cannot achieve across an entire novel.
During a television interview in 2011, Nicks said of her favourite songwriters and how they inspired her creatively: “My songwriting influences were more Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell and because of what I learned from them (was) their phrasing. The way they wrote their poetry, the way they wrote their poetry to music. I say studied, and I guess that’s what I did: I studied. I laid on the floor and listened to their music, read their music and read their words. I just loved it, I never looked it as studying.”
Speaking specifically about the power of Mitchell, she added: “I just looked it as these are my very favourite writers and very favourite phrasers because learning to phrase when you’re a poet is hard. Joni taught me you can fit thousands of words in every sentence if you sing it right.”
This remark is not the only time that Nicks has made the point about Mitchell’s skill for phrasing. During an interview with Forbes in 2020, she said: “When I tell people my greatest influences I say Joni Mitchell for phrasing, she could fit 50 words in a sentence and have them sound glorious without being rushed or crushed in, so I really learned a lot from her about phrasing.”
While Mitchell is an artist Nicks still holds in the highest regard, her love affair with the singer-songwriter will always remind her of 1974. At this stage in her life, Nicks’ relationship with Lindsay Buckingham was beginning to collapse, but the release of Court and Spark spoke to her when nothing else seemed to make sense.
“[Court and Spark] was one of those albums that I lay on the floor and listened to for three days straight,” she once recalled during a conversation with The Guardian. She elaborated: “Lindsey and I were coming to the end of our relationship, and I’d met someone else. So I latched on to the title track, which is about a new relationship that doesn’t last.”
Nicks didn’t deliberately seek to replicate the songwriter’s use of phrasing; instead, it was born out of an obsession that allowed her to pinpoint the one facet that made her a special talent, which she could bring into her sound.