If all Stevie Nicks ever did was be in Fleetwood Mac, that would have been plenty to make her one of the most influential women in rock ‘n’ roll. But as we know, she hardly stopped there.
Nicks has eight solo albums to her name, with her debut album, 1981’s Bella Donna, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard 200. In total, six of those eight albums reached the Top 10 in the U.S. and in 2019, she became the very first woman to have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, once for her work with Fleetwood Mac and again for her solo career. Music, in other words, is the thing that keeps Nicks going.
“We want to have our serious side and all that, but you can’t take yourself too seriously,” she told The New Yorker in 2022. “When you keep music in your life, I think it just changes you and pulls you out of a deep hole. Whenever I’m depressed, I just put music on. The second I walk into my dressing room, I plug my iPod into my old-fashioned stereo and I just crank the music.”
In between Fleetwood Mac albums, solo releases and a whole lot of live performing, Nicks has also lent her talents to albums by other people — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, for example. But sometimes it was not the sort you’d expect. Below, we’ve rounded up five such examples that you might not know about…
1. Warren Zevon, Warren Zevon (1976)
Warren Zevon released his second solo album in 1976, a self-titled release produced by Jackson Browne. And if you pay close attention to the backing vocals on “Mohammed’s Radio” and “Join Me in L.A.,” you’ll notice a familiar voice: Nicks’. Lindsey Buckingham also contributed to the album, but the craziest part is that, for a while, Nicks, Buckingham and Zevon all roomed together in Los Angeles. Talk about a house full of talent.
2. Nightwatch, Kenny Loggins (1978)
In the late ’70s, Kenny Loggins did a duet with Nicks, titled “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend.'”
“I didn’t realize at the time how difficult it was to go from a successful duo into being a successful soloist, and I credit Stevie Nicks a lot with my breakthrough,” Loggins said in the 2024 HBO film Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary (via People), “because it was the duet with Stevie that ultimately made a huge difference in launching my solo career, ’cause she was so loved at the time.”
He continued: “She said to me one day, probably we were drunk, she said, ‘If you need a chick singer, give me a call.’ So I said, ‘OK, I got that going for me.'”
The song appeared on Loggins’ 1978 album Nightwatch and went to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
3. King of the Blues, B.B. King (1988)
The only thing better than having one member of Fleetwood Mac on your album is obviously having two. B.B. King did exactly that with a song called “Can’t Get Enough,” which featured both Nicks and Mick Fleetwood. This appeared on a 1988 album called King of the Blues:1989, which was Grammy-nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Recording.
READ MORE: The Stories Behind 10 Rare Songs by Stevie Nicks
4. Robin Zander, Robin Zander (1993)
When Robin Zander of Cheap Trick released his debut solo album in 1993, it came with an incredible array of guest musicians, including but not limited to Don Felder of the Eagles, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and, yes, Nicks. She contributed backing vocals to a song called “Secret.”
5. C’mon, C’mon, Sheryl Crow (2002)
“Since I was seven or eight — listening to my sister’s records, hearing my parents play music — I dreamt about being Stevie Nicks,” Sheryl Crow told Rolling Stone in 2020. That was the year after she and Nicks collaborated on what Crow was then calling her last album, Threads. (Crow has since made another album, 2024’s Evolution.) Almost 20 years prior to that though, Nicks appeared on Crow’s 2002 album C’mon, C’mon, singing backing vocals on the title track and “Diamond Road.”
Ranking Every Stevie Nicks Solo Album
Fleetwood Mac made her a star, but her own records also helped seal her legend.
Gallery Credit: Annie Zaleski
