“What if She Falls Flat on Her Face?”: The Iconic Fleetwood Mac Single Stevie Nicks Was Scared To Release

Before Fleetwood Mac asked Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham to join the band, Nicks had written a song about a Welsh goddess named Rhiannon. This was 1974, and Nicks had no immediate plans to use the song commercially. Following her joining Fleetwood Mac, “Rhiannon” became one of her musical contributions to the band’s first album with the new lineup, eponymously titled and released in 1975.

In hindsight, imagining the legacy of Fleetwood Mac without “Rhiannon” seems almost impossible. But in that tumultuous, thrilling year of Nicks’ life, where she graduated from cocktail waitress to rockstar overnight, she wasn’t so sure she was ready to put that song out into the world. Nicks detailed these reservations in a 1989 interview with BBC’s One To One.

“I didn’t want them to release ‘Rhiannon’ as a single because I thought, ‘What if she doesn’t make it? What if my Rhiannon falls flat on her face?’ Then, it’s not my choice to release her as a single. She is a mythological goddess of horses and steeds and maker of birds, and she’s a brilliant, brilliant character. What if she falls flat on her face?”

Stevie Nicks Was Protective Over “Rhiannon” at First

The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman told the BBC that she didn’t write “Rhiannon” for commercial release. “I wrote ‘Rhiannon’ because I loved her name, and I loved her story. I didn’t write her to be sold. She simply is not for sale and never has been,” Stevie Nicks added.

Nicks might never have had any intention of putting “Rhiannon” up for sale. But the song certainly went for a good price. The song served as the third single of the band’s tenth studio album overall. The first two were “Over My Head” and “Warm Ways”. Out of all four singles, the last being “Say You Love Me”, “Rhiannon” remains one of the best-known songs of the band’s discography.

Nicks’ fears proved unfounded as “Rhiannon” rose up the charts. The song peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 4 in Canada. Given this was Nicks’ first composition released as a single for the band—the other three from this album being written by Christine McVie—we would argue that “Rhiannon” did anything but fall on its face. If anything, it did the exact opposite, rising to the ranks of rock ‘n’ roll royalty suitable for a musical goddess like the song’s namesake.

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