Every Stevie Nicks Album, Ranked

Stephanie Lynn Nicks was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1948. After her family moved to California, she received a guitar for her 16th birthday, began writing songs, and met a guitarist named Lindsey Buckingham in high school. After Nicks joined his band Fritz, they opened for stars like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, eventually becoming a couple and releasing a self-titled album as folk rock duo Buckingham Nicks in 1973.

The long-running British blues band Fleetwood Mac was in need of a new guitarist in 1974, and when they invited Buckingham to join the band, he did so on the condition that Nicks come along with him. That ended up being the two-for-one bargain of a lifetime, as the two American singer-songwriters quickly turned Fleetwood Mac into a hit machine. Stevie Nicks wrote and sang smashes including “Rhiannon” and the chart-topping “Dreams,” and 1977’s Rumours became one of the best-selling albums of all time. Her animated stage presence, trademark flowing shawls and scarves, and above all her feathery, inimitable voice made her the biggest, most recognizable star out of the dozens of musicians who’ve been members of Fleetwood Mac.

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In 1981, Nicks released her classic solo debut Bella Donna. But she continued making albums with Fleetwood Mac and became, along with Phil Collins and Genesis, one of the rare superstars who maintained a balancing act for several years as both a solo artist and a member of a major group. In 2019, Nicks became the first woman to be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, with Fleetwood Mac and also as a solo act.

In September 1983, Nicks was joined by frequent collaborator Tom Petty onstage at Radio City Music Hall for a concert in support of her second solo album, The Wild Heart. A recording of that night, New York 1983, was released on CD by the Blue Line label on April 4. But what is Stevie’s greatest studio album?

10. The Other Side of the Mirror (1989)

Nicks has no memories of the tour in support of The Other Side of the Mirror thanks to an addiction to Klonopin, which she was prescribed to help kick her cocaine habit. The album itself isn’t particularly memorable either, outside of “Rooms on Fire,” her last Top 40 hit in the U.S. One of Nicks’s most consistent collaborators, Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, co-wrote a trio of tracks that redeem the album a little, including the bluesy, foreboding “Whole Lotta Trouble.” But it feels clear that Nicks has lost her way as one of the great rock stars of her era when Kenny G shows up to play sax solos on two songs.  

9. Trouble in Shangri-La (2001)

Some of the best songs on Trouble in Shangri-La had been kicking around for decades. “Sorcerer” and “Candlebright” had first been written in the Buckingham Nicks era, and “Planets of the Universe” was demoed during the Rumours sessions. Natalie Maines blends voices with Nicks beautifully on the duet “Too Far from Texas,” a year before her group the Chicks scored a hit with a cover of “Landslide.” A song inspired by the infighting on Fleetwood Mac’s late ’90s reunion tours, “Fall From Grace,” may be the single hardest rocking track of Nicks’s entire career. “Trouble in Shangri-La’s slick production and syrupy melodies beg for the raw drama of Nicks’s imminent live performances,” Sal Cinquemani wrote in the Slant Magazine review of the album.

8. In Your Dreams (2011)

Stevie Nicks worked with two producers for the first time on In Your Dreams, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews Band), and it feels like they tailored the sound of the album to her voice and her legacy. “Soldier’s Angel,” a dirge with Lindsey Buckingham, is just about the only song on In Your Dreams that doesn’t particularly sound like it could’ve been on a Fleetwood Mac record. Even “Annabel Lee” features the Edgar Allen Poe poem of the same name set to a toe-tapping musical arrangement that would’ve fit right in on Mirage.

7. Enchanted (1998)

The three-disc box set Enchanted features highlights from Nicks’s first five solo albums alongside rarities, remixes, extended mixes, live recordings, demos, soundtrack cuts, and hit collaborations with Kenny Loggins and John Stewart. Some of the highlights include the B-side “One More Big Time Rock and Roll Star” and the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack gem “Sleeping Angel.” It may be a bit redundant to own Enchanted as well as her proper albums, but if you had only one Nicks release, the box set would be an excellent choice, a fairly complete portrait of her work outside Fleetwood Mac.  

6. Rock a Little (1985)

Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk was the most expensive album that had ever been recorded at the time of its release in 1979. A few years later, Stevie Nicks made another album that went way over budget and wound up costing over a million dollars. She began recording her third solo album with producer and ex-boyfriend Jimmy Iovine under the title Mirror Mirror in 1984. Unhappy with the results, Nicks shelved much of what they’d recorded and finished the retitled Rock a Little with an assortment of other producers, including Keith Olsen and Rick Nowels. Nicks penned the touching “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You?” for Joe Walsh of the Eagles about the 1974 death of his daughter Emma, but little else on the album has that kind of emotional resonance. Two songs written for Nicks that didn’t make the cut wound up more enduringly popular than anything on Rock a Little: Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and Heart’s “These Dreams.” “For the most part, the ethereal, mystical sound is similar to her previous outings (sort of like a more commercial Kate Bush). But producer Jimmy Iovine has beefed things up a bit, particularly on cuts like ‘I Can’t Wait,’” Daniel Brogan wrote in the Chicago Tribune review of Rock a Little.

5. 24Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault (2014)

Nicks’s assistant showed her that many of her old demos were being bootlegged and circulated on YouTube, and she decided to re-record those songs and finally give them a proper release. Of course, many of Nicks’s later solo albums were partially cobbled together from leftovers from previous projects. But 24 Karat Gold feels like a surprisingly complete artistic statement, full of moody, wordy, and playful songs that Nicks set aside in the ’70s and ’80s when strong-willed guys like Lindsey Buckingham and Jimmy Iovine didn’t think there was room for them on whatever album they were working on at the time.

4. Street Angel (1994)

Street Angel was another album with a troubled gestation, with the original producer Glyn Johns leaving the project before its completion as Nicks co-produced the final product with Thom Panunzio and the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan. Despite the album’s rushed completion, though, it sounds terrific, and she was finally free from some of the stuffy overproduction of her late ’80s work. It’s the only solo album Nicks made between 1990 to 1997 when she was not a member of Fleetwood Mac, and it’s underrated by just about everybody, including Nicks herself. The album’s only glaring weak spot is a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman,” which features Dylan himself on guitar and harmonica, and Nicks delivering the lyrics in a laughable Dylan impression.

3. The Wild Heart (1983)

The Wild Heart partly sounds like a satisfying sequel to Bella Donna, including yet another great Tom Petty duet on “I Will Run to You.” But “Stand Back” and “If Anyone Falls” represent Nicks’s leap into a big, glossy synth pop sound, and she made that transition better than a lot of her ’70s rocker contemporaries. “Little Red Corvette” inspired Stevie Nicks to write “Stand Back,” and Prince himself gave his blessing and stopped by the studio to play some uncredited keyboards on the track. “Seldom has Stevie Nicks been in better voice than on The Wild Heart. Her distinctive lower range growl has broadened and strengthened considerably,” Chris Connelly wrote in the Rolling Stone review of the album.

2. Buckingham Nicks by Buckingham Nicks (1973)

Stevie Nicks was 25 years old when she and her boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham signed to Polydor Records and recorded their only album as a duo at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles. It was there that Mick Fleetwood heard some of their songs and started to think about bringing the young American couple into Fleetwood Mac for their self-titled tenth album, which featured a re-recording of “Crystal.” Buckingham Nicks is in many ways a sonic blueprint for Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits, far more than anything on the band’s first nine albums, and Nicks’s voice and persona are already fully formed on “Crying in the Night” and “Long Distance Winner.” The album has remained out of print for decades, and given the acrimony since Buckingham was ousted from Fleetwood Mac in 2018—because Nicks refused to work with him—it will probably never be reissued. The heavily bootlegged album has become an influential cult classic, though, and just last year, indie singer-songwriters Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird covered the album in its entirety under the title Cunningham Bird.

1. Bella Donna (1981)

With three singer-songwriters in Fleetwood Mac competing for space on the band’s albums, Nicks had a lot of unreleased songs that she wanted to get out into the world. But Warner Bros. didn’t want to sign her as a solo artist and disrupt things with the biggest band on its roster, so Nicks took charge and founded her own label, Modern Records, which was in turn distributed by a Warners subsidiary, Atco. Bella Donna was launched with two Top 10 hits that both paired Nicks with an established male rock star, Tom Petty on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and Don Henley on “Leather and Lace,” but it’s very much Stevie’s show on signature solo tracks like “Outside the Rain” and the chugging arena rock anthem “Edge of Seventeen.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.