The Feminine Musique: "Rhiannon"

As a longtime lover of Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks’ persona, and admittedly someone who dressed up as Sabrina the Teenage Witch for Halloween, black cat in tow, I decided to investigate whether Rhiannon is the witchy feminist icon we’ve always loved or someone less dimensional.

The Feminine Musique is a series where writers analyze portrayals of women in music.

Written by Claire Hardwick

Photo courtesy of The Ledge

“This is a song about an old Welsh witch.”

In her well-known raspy croon, Stevie Nicks, draped in silvery scarves and occult-like jewelry, introduces her song “Rhiannon” before a well-known performance from the ‘70s. Known for her mysticism and obsession of all things spiritual, Nicks was the witchy icon that hippies were looking for. Since Nicks’ success with Fleetwood Mac and her own solo career, the feminist adoption of witchiness has become more mainstream.

But along with witches, magic, and casting spells comes the well-known trope of the “manic pixie dream girl,” coined by film critic Nathan Rabin as “exist[ing] solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries."

So is Stevie Nicks portraying women, specifically of the witchy genre, in a positive light? Let’s investigate.

In the opening lines of “Rhiannon,” Nicks sings out:

“Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn't you love to love her?
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?”

While these lyrics highlight Rhiannon’s magical qualities, including her ability to fly around and arouse suspicion wherever she goes, Nicks’ questioning of “who will be her lover” introduces her as a sexual object. However, from Nicks’ wording, it seems as though Rhiannon is an object not because of her looks but because of her intellect and powers. This highlights a typical difference between the female and male gaze.

Nicks continues in the next part of the song:

“All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised to you heaven?
Will you ever win?”

Even though this part of the song still sexualizes Rhiannon, it’s doing so from Nicks’ perspective. Nicks wonders if Rhiannon’s influence is enough to make someone stay, and if that would be a good thing.

The rest of the song is rather repetitive, alternating between Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham wailing “Rhiannon” over a catchy guitar lick as the drums build to the end of the song. But Nicks does take some time to describe more of Rhiannon’s qualities:

“She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
And when the sky is starless.”

Lyrically the most powerful part of the song, this section helps the listener better understand the empowering nature of Rhiannon as a character. Her ability to be both a cat in the dark and darkness itself could be seen as fulfilling the “manic pixie dream girl” trope by immediately sexualizing Rhiannon due to her powers and therefore reducing her to one aspect of herself. But Nicks knows her audience. It doesn’t hurt that Nicks herself kind of looks like this witchy Rhiannon character and by writing and performing this song she is referencing herself and the power she has over her audience, making them spellbound.

“Rhiannon” was not only one of Fleetwood Mac’s most popular songs but also a jumping off point for Stevie Nicks to showcase her singing abilities and dynamic songwriting skills. The revisit to ‘70s culture in recent musical acts like Haim and outright witchy weirdness with artists such as Lorde — both acts that Nicks has personally reached out to — are a way of paying homage to her singing about an old witch all those years ago.

Thanks to the lyrical genius of Stevie Nicks, Rhiannon, both as a character in a song and within a greater discussion of witchiness in pop culture, can be seen as a form of empowerment for women across the globe.