TEST SPINS | Fleetwood Mac: ‘Rumours’

About a month ago, on Oct. 12, Stevie Nicks was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, where she performed songs she released as a solo artist, including “The Lighthouse” and “Edge of Seventeen.” The performance was, unsurprisingly, great — the dominant stage presence, the vibrant vocals, the unrelenting eye contact; it was all there. Despite all that, in my eyes, there is no Stevie Nicks performance that will ever measure up to her rendition of “Silver Springs” off the deluxe version of Rumours with the rest of Fleetwood Mac at Warner Bros. Studios in May of 1997. Clips from this performance have been heavily circulating on social media in recent years, with people pointing out her withering stare towards the band’s guitarist and Nicks’ ex Lindsey Buckingham, and I can’t help but think of it whenever I hear any Fleetwood Mac song.

Women of Rock – An Ode to Divergence

Upon rock legend Stevie Nicks’ recent SNL performance, watching her familiar prowess in layers of black chiffon, I became acutely aware of the divergence between her identities — female and rockstar. In the ’60s and ’70s, societal standards largely placed women on a periphery: While making inroads in the workforce, they primarily occupied subordinate positions. To be a musician however, much less a rockstar, required absolute authority to take up space and roar into the microphone, regardless of the microphone feedback that followed. Grooming, dating and eventually dumping young groupies was commonplace for the male rockstar — just look at John Oates, Elvis and Steven Tyler. With a bit of alcohol,  debauchery and womanizing became another privilege of stardom, a given, left untouched until brave women began to speak up decades later.

Manicured Nails, My Right to Abortion and a Damn Good Iced Coffee

Girlhood. It’s a terrain as complex as it is universal marked by its commodification, demonization and idolization. In its essence lies a social and biological experience more fraught than any other. Recently, my reflections explored the politics of girlhood — essays laden with dense jargon, lamenting the systems that uphold its persistent scrutiny and sexualization. And while not dismissing the relevance of this discourse, in the midst of it, I found myself losing sight of its fundamentals.

O’BRIEN | Loving Rock N’ Roll As a Woman

By KATIE O’BRIEN

At some point in my early teens, I started listening to rock music. Classic, punk, alt, grunge — I would stay up late into the night listening to and reading about my favorite ‘70s-90s era band at the time. In high school, I eventually came to the realization that pretty much all of the artists on my silver iPod nano were male. At first, this did not necessarily strike me as strange, or as a problem — I just accepted that the good rock music was made by men; that the deep scruffiness of a man’s voice was a necessary part of the rock equation. But I eventually became much more interested in introducing gender equality to my playlists.