Fleetwood Mac – Landslide
About The Song
When Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, the band had been in a state of near-constant flux. Originally a blues band, the group was as famous for its revolving door of guitarists and vocalists as it was for its handful of FM hits, making it hard to develop a familiar signature sound. The addition of Buckingham and Nicks was just what Brits Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and his then-wife Christine McVie needed to achieve long-overdue success. The duo gave the band new energy and an identifiable vocal sound, as well as material that would become part of the band’s identity, like the Nicks-written “Landslide.”
A song about the changes and challenges of life, Nicks wrote “Landslide” in 1974 in Aspen’s snow country, while her then-boyfriend Buckingham was on tour with Don Everly. Nicks has said in interviews that the song was about her romance with Buckingham and their career struggles, as well as her relationship with her business-executive father. Her months in the mountains inspired the lines with the song’s title, And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills/‘Til the landslide brought me down. And one verse contains questions that most of us ask ourselves at one time or another:
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
It’s an emotional lyric, and while it may seem simple, the introspection of those words resonated with millions of record buyers – mostly female, one would guess – who helped make the eponymous debut album by this Fleetwood Mac lineup one of the biggest multi-platinum albums of the 1970s.
