The song Stevie Nicks said made absolutely no sense: “I don’t know what the hell this is about”
Not every classic rock song is supposed to have one dictated structure for its entire length. Artists are known to be a bit cagey about their songs, but for every track that’s too personal to talk about, there are at least a dozen more that are absolute nonsense from start to finish. Stevie Nicks may have taken special care of her lyrics whenever she worked with Fleetwood Mac, but she will be the first to tell you that ‘Sisters of the Moon’ isn’t necessarily on the same level as Bob Dylan or anything.
Then again, nothing really makes a lot of sense about anything on Tusk. Since the band were still high off the success of Rumours, everyone was coming in with their best foot forward, all while making the kind of songs that felt like four different bands coming together to create one album.
Just when you seem to settle on a theme for the project, another songwriter will come to the table with a completely different idea that throws everything off. While many of the zanier moments on the record come courtesy of Lindsey Buckingham, Nicks had the most solid track record with her songs.
‘Sara’ is certainly among her best ballads, and ‘Storms’ has a bit more of a moody take on her classic sound, even if Buckingham tried to put his own spin all over it. Even if it were released on a Stevie Nicks solo album, ‘Sisters of the Moon’ would be a bit of a weird departure for her.
The mystical side of her sound is there, to be sure, but the lyrics don’t really connect in the same way that songs like ‘Landslide’ or ‘Rhiannon’ do. Then again, Nicks admitted that she threw the song’s lyrics together to get the right sound for the song rather than rehash her personal drama.
Speaking with Rolling Stone about the track, Nicks said that there’s no real plot to the song, saying, “I honestly don’t know what the hell this song is about. It wasn’t a love song, it wasn’t written about a man. … It was just about a feeling I might have had over a couple of days, going inward in my gnarly trollness. Makes no sense. Perfect for this record”.
While this may not have worked as a Stevie Nicks song, it works perfectly as a Fleetwood Mac track. Birthed from jamming on the changes while in the studio, the band conjures up the same feelings as they did while working on tracks like ‘The Chain’, eventually putting together the best of everyone’s abilities and putting them under one roof.
Considering the problems going on behind the scenes, ‘Sisters of the Moon’ feels like one of the few times where the band were on the same page making Tusk. The rest of the songs may have a strange feel to them, but this was the first time the band stopped trying to make their next big artistic statement and played just for the love of playing.
Mick Fleetwood would also consider the song to be one of the highlights of the band’s career, even if the lyrics weren’t all that comprehensible. For all of the different sonic avenues that the song goes down, it almost doesn’t need to be understood on that deep a level. As Nicks said, it’s more about a feeling than anything else, and sometimes music can conjure up emotions that words never could.