Stevie Nicks has never pretended that Fleetwood Mac was a clean, easy band. The whole appeal was always in the tension between her and Lindsey Buckingham, and that tension still shaped the group when they reunited for Say You Will in 2003. But even in that late-era comeback, Nicks had songs she simply would not touch. One of them was Buckingham’s “Come,” which she refused to sing because she thought it was too dirty.
The story says a lot about how Nicks approached Fleetwood Mac material. She was not interested in singing songs that painted her as the villain in the Buckingham story, and she had already reluctantly lived through songs like “Go Your Own Way.” After being hurt by the removal of “Silver Springs,” she was even less willing to give up time and energy for material that felt loaded against her.
By the time Say You Will came together, the album already had a strange shape. Much of it had been written while Buckingham was working on his own material, and the result was an 18-track record that often felt like two solo projects forced into the same frame. That made Nicks even less eager to cross the line on songs that felt suggestive or unnecessary.
Buckingham later recalled asking Nicks to sing on “Come,” only for her to turn it down because she thought it was dirty. His comment suggested both amusement and surprise, but also pointed to something deeper: even after decades of fame, Nicks still had a strong personal code about what she would and would not sing.
That refusal fits the broader story of Say You Will. Nicks was happy to contribute where the songs served her voice and her perspective, but she was not interested in letting Buckingham reshape her role or pull her into material that undercut her. Tracks like “Illume” worked better because they stayed sombre and serious, especially in the shadow of 9/11, rather than being pushed toward the kind of polished Fleetwood Mac singalong Buckingham might have favored.
In the end, the article’s point is simple: Stevie Nicks was still Stevie Nicks in 2003. She could return to Fleetwood Mac, share the studio with Buckingham again, and help build one of the band’s later-era records — but she was never going to sing something just because it was there. If a song felt dirty, pointed, or off to her, that was the end of the conversation.
