Bella Donna | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Studio album by | ||||
Released | July 27, 1981 | |||
Recorded | Autumn 1980 – Spring 1981 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 41:55 | |||
Label | ||||
Producer | ||||
Stevie Nicks chronology | ||||
| ||||
Singles from Bella Donna | ||||
|
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
Mojo | [2] |
Record Collector | [3] |
Rolling Stone | [4] |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [5] |
Smash Hits | 6/10 [6] |
Bella Donna is the debut solo studio album by American singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks. Released on July 27, 1981, the album peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200 in September of that year. Bella Donna was awarded platinum status by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on October 7, 1981, less than three months after its release, and in 1990 was certified quadruple-platinum for four million copies shipped. [7] Bella Donna spent nearly three years on the Billboard 200, from July 1981 to June 1984. [8]
The album spawned four hit singles during 1981 and 1982: the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-penned duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (number 3), the Don Henley duet "Leather and Lace" (number 6), along with "Edge of Seventeen" (number 11) and the country-tinged "After the Glitter Fades" (number 32). [9]
Bella Donna would mark the beginning of Nicks' trend of calling upon her many musician friends and connections to fully realize her sparse demo recordings. Along with friends Tom Petty and Don Henley, Nicks brought in session musician Waddy Wachtel, Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band pianist Roy Bittan, and Stax session man Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. & the MGs. The album marked the first recording featuring Nicks' backing vocalists, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, who still record and tour with Nicks today. [10] [11]
The album was also included in the "Greatest of All Time Billboard 200 Albums" chart. [12]
Nicks began work on Bella Donna in 1979, in between sessions for Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album, released in October that year. Nicks recorded various demo versions of songs in early and mid-1980 but these recordings were not used on the album. Following the end of the Tusk tour on September 1, 1980, work with a full band commenced under producer Jimmy Iovine. [13] [14]
Nicks recalled that the album was recorded piecemeal since several of the session musicians, including Waddy Watchel and Russ Kunkel, were operating under a tight schedule. "We didn't put on 50,000 guitars because we didn't have Waddy around long enough to do 50,000 guitar overdubs. We were lucky to get him to do one guitar part." The Bella Donna recording sessions also presented Nicks with an opportunity to work on arrangements without Lindsey Buckingham, who extensively assisted with arrangements on her Fleetwood Mac material. For Bella Donna, Nicks instead allowed the session musicians to develop their own ideas for the instrumentation based on the demos she created. [15]
Recording sessions continued until the spring of 1981 when the final songs for the album were completed: "Edge of Seventeen" and "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around". The 10-song, 42-minute album Bella Donna was released in the summer of 1981. Nicks wrote "Think About It" for her friend and Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie during the Rumours recording sessions, but the song was never completed until Bella Donna. [16] After the Glitter Fades was Nicks' oldest song on the record, having been written in 1972, while "Think About It", "Leather and Lace", and "Highway Man" were written in 1975. [15]
A number of finished songs did not make it on the album, including "Blue Lamp", which was released instead on Heavy Metal soundtrack later in 1981, and "Sleeping Angel", released on the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack in 1982. These two songs were included on Nicks' Enchanted boxed set in 1998, along with another unused Bella Donna session song, "Gold and Braid". Three more songs from these sessions, "If You Were My Love", "Belle Fleur" and "The Dealer", were finally released on Nicks' album 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault (2014). In total, Nicks recorded 16 songs for the album, of which ten were selected for Bella Donna. [15]
On her Enchanted boxed set release in 1998, remastered versions of some Bella Donna tracks ran noticeably longer in some instances, notably "Leather and Lace". Video footage of the album sessions can be found on the DVD portion of Nicks' retrospective release Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks (2007).
Rhino released an expanded, three-disc version of Bella Donna on November 4, 2016. The first disc is the remastered original album. The second disc includes outtakes, alternative versions, demos, and material released on soundtracks. The third disc consists of live tracks from Nicks' "White Wing Dove" tour 1981, recorded at the Fox Wilshire Theatre in Los Angeles, California on December 13, 1981. [17]
All lyrics are written by Stevie Nicks, except "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", by Tom Petty; all music is composed by Nicks, except where noted
No. | Title | Music | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Bella Donna" | 5:21 | |
2. | "Kind of Woman" |
| 3:12 |
3. | "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) | Mike Campbell | 4:04 |
4. | "Think About It" |
| 3:35 |
5. | "After the Glitter Fades" | 3:31 | |
6. | "Edge of Seventeen" | 5:28 | |
7. | "How Still My Love" | 3:54 | |
8. | "Leather and Lace" (with Don Henley) | 3:44 | |
9. | "Outside the Rain" | 4:19 | |
10. | "The Highwayman" | 4:49 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Bella Donna" | |
2. | "Kind of Woman" | |
3. | "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" | |
4. | "Think About It" | |
5. | "After the Glitter Fades" | |
6. | "Edge of Seventeen" | |
7. | "How Still My Love" | |
8. | "Leather and Lace" | |
9. | "Outside the Rain" | |
10. | "The Highwayman" |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Edge of Seventeen" (Early Take*) | 6:40 |
2. | "Think About It" (Alternate Version*) | 4:47 |
3. | "How Still My Love" (Alternate Version*) | 4:52 |
4. | "Leather and Lace" (Alternate Version*) | 4:18 |
5. | "Bella Donna" (Demo*) | 3:32 |
6. | "Gold and Braid" (Unreleased Version*) | 4:16 |
7. | "Sleeping Angel" (Alternate Version*) | 4:44 |
8. | "If You Were My Love" (Unreleased Version*) | 4:56 |
9. | "The Dealer" (Unreleased Version*) | 4:19 |
10. | "Blue Lamp" (from Heavy Metal Soundtrack (Asylum/Full Moon 90004, 1981)) | 3:50 |
11. | "Sleeping Angel" (from Fast Times at Ridgemont High Soundtrack (Asylum/Full Moon 60158, 1982)) | 4:40 |
(*) denotes previously unreleased
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Gold Dust Woman" | 6:40 |
2. | "Gold and Braid" | 5:12 |
3. | "I Need to Know" | 2:20 |
4. | "Outside the Rain" | 3:59 |
5. | "Dreams" | 5:10 |
6. | "Angel" | 4:46 |
7. | "After the Glitter Fades" | 4:05 |
8. | "Leather and Lace" | 4:23 |
9. | "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" | 4:43 |
10. | "Bella Donna" | 5:56 |
11. | "Sara" | 7:50 |
12. | "How Still My Love" | 5:12 |
13. | "Edge of Seventeen" | 9:07 |
14. | "Rhiannon (includes slow piano intro)" | 8:44 |
Band
Additional musicians
Tour Band (2016 Deluxe Edition Disc 3)
Photography
Production
Nicks underwent a short national tour in support of the album, starting on November 28, 1981, and finishing on December 13, 1981. The final night at The Wilshire Fox Theatre in Beverly Hills was recorded by HBO for a television special and later released on VHS and LaserDisc video in many territories by CBS/Fox in 1982 as White Wing Dove – Stevie Nicks in Concert. The whole show was recorded, but only 9 tracks ("Gold Dust Woman", "Gold And Braid", "I Need to Know", an edited "Outside the Rain", "Dreams", "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", "Sara", "Edge of Seventeen" and "Rhiannon") were shown on the TV special and released to video.
However, the live performance of "Leather and Lace" was used as a video promo for the single release (even though it was a solo version and did not feature Don Henley), and did surface on the 1986 VHS collection I Can't Wait, which featured six of Nicks' promo-clips between 1981 and 1985. These six promos were released on DVD as a special feature to the Australian issue of Fleetwood Mac – Mirage Tour in 2007.
On the 2016 Bella Donna Deluxe Edition, 14 tracks from the show - the ten aforementioned songs as well as "Angel", "After the Glitter Fades", "Bella Donna" and "How Still My Love" - were remastered and released (Disc 3), with "Outside the Rain" being restored to its full version. Previously, only two tracks ("Edge of Seventeen" and "Gold and Braid") were found on the boxset The Enchanted Works of Stevie Nicks (1998). "Blue Lamp" and "Think About It" were recorded and received audio broadcast on radio but were not televised, and as such have never been officially released.
Nicks' retrospective Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks (2007) included the full live 1981 clip of "Edge of Seventeen" on the DVD supplement, with optional commentary from Nicks. She admits that her tears at the end of the song were due to her thoughts of having to join Fleetwood Mac in France the following day to begin recording the album Mirage , one of the key reasons why the 1981 tour was so short.
The White Wing Dove performance remains unreleased in its entirety, although it has been circulating for many years amongst fans as a bootleg.
Tour set list
Tour dates
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia | — | 100,000 [35] |
Canada (Music Canada) [36] | 2× Platinum | 200,000^ |
New Zealand (RMNZ) [37] | Gold | 7,500^ |
United States (RIAA) [38] | 4× Platinum | 4,000,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
Stephanie Lynn Nicks is an American singer-songwriter, known for her work with the band Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.
Mirage is the thirteenth studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 2 July 1982 by Warner Bros. Records. This studio effort's soft rock sound stood in stark contrast to its more experimental predecessor, 1979's Tusk. Mirage yielded several singles: "Hold Me", "Gypsy", "Love in Store", "Oh Diane", and "Can't Go Back".
Hard Promises is the fourth studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released on May 5, 1981, on Backstreet Records.
Greatest Hits is a compilation album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, released on November 16, 1993. It is Petty's best-selling album to date and was certified 12× Platinum by the RIAA on April 28, 2015. The single "Mary Jane's Last Dance" became one of Petty's most popular songs, reaching No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The other new song on the album is a cover of the Thunderclap Newman hit "Something in the Air". The album contains no songs from 1987's Let Me Up . However, three songs from Petty's 1989 solo album Full Moon Fever were included.
The Wild Heart is the second solo studio album by American singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks. Recording began in late 1982, shortly after the end of Fleetwood Mac's Mirage Tour. After the death of her best friend, Robin Anderson, and with new appreciation for her life and career, Nicks recorded the album in only a few months and was released on June 10, 1983, a year after Fleetwood Mac's Mirage album. It peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200 and achieved platinum status on September 12, 1983. The album has shipped 2 million copies in the US alone.
Trouble in Shangri-La is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks. Released in 2001, it was her first new solo album since 1994's Street Angel. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200, Nicks' highest peak since 1983's The Wild Heart, with sales of 109,000 copies in its first week. The album remained in the top 10 in its second week holding the #9 spot and sold 76,000 copies. The album spent a total of 20 weeks on the Billboard 200. It achieved Gold status within six weeks of its release for shipping 500,000 copies in the U.S. As of February 2011, the album has sold over 663,000 copies in the US. Three singles were released: "Every Day", "Planets of the Universe", and "Sorcerer".
Rock a Little is the third solo studio album by American singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks, released on November 18, 1985, by Modern Records.
"Edge of Seventeen" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks from her debut solo studio album Bella Donna (1981), released as the third single from the album on February 4, 1982. The lyrics were written by Nicks to express the grief resulting from the death of her uncle Jonathan and the murder of John Lennon during the same week of December 1980. The song features a distinctive, chugging 16th-note guitar riff, drum beat and a simple chord structure typical of Nicks' songs. The song's title for the single release was "Edge of Seventeen (Just Like the White Winged Dove)". In the United States, "Edge of Seventeen" just missed out on the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 11. Despite this, it became one of Nicks' most enduring and recognizable songs and has been covered by several artists. In 2021, it was ranked No. 217 on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Enchanted is a three-disc box set of material by American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks, which encompasses her solo career from Bella Donna (1981) to Street Angel (1994) and beyond.
Street Angel is the fifth studio album by American singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks. Released in 1994, the album peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and has been certified Gold by the RIAA for shipments of over 500,000 copies.
This is the solo discography of the American singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks.
"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" is a song recorded by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released as the first single from Nicks' debut solo album Bella Donna (1981). The track is the album's only song that was neither written nor co-written by Nicks. Written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell as a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song, Jimmy Iovine, who was also working for Stevie Nicks at the time, arranged for her to sing on it. Petty sings with Nicks in the chorus and bridge, while his entire band provides instrumentation with the exception of Ron Blair, who was replaced by bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn for the recording.
"Sara" is a song written by singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks of the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, which was released as a single from the 1979 Tusk double LP. The song peaked at No. 7 in the US for three weeks, No. 37 in the UK for two weeks, No. 11 in Australia, and No. 12 in Canada.
In Your Dreams is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks, released on May 3, 2011 by Reprise Records. It is her first solo studio album since Trouble in Shangri-La (2001) and also coincides with the 30th anniversary of the release of her debut solo album Bella Donna.
"I Can't Wait" is a song by American singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks from her third solo studio album Rock a Little (1985). Written by Nicks, Rick Nowels, and Eric Pressly, the song was released as the album's lead single in Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and as the second single in the United States and Germany.
Live at Red Rocks is a concert performance video by the American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks. It was filmed during Nicks' 1986 Rock a Little Tour. It features special guests Peter Frampton on guitar and Mick Fleetwood on percussion. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Performance Music Video in 1987. Originally released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1987, it was also issued on the VCD format, and later reissued on DVD in 2007.
Stevie Nicks supported the release of her third album Rock a Little with a world tour, which included shows in the United States, Canada and Australia. The tour started on April 11, 1986 in Houston, Texas and ended on October 6, 1986, in Sydney, Australia.
The 24 Karat Gold Tour was the seventeenth concert tour by American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks. The tour was joined by special guest The Pretenders and it was launched in support of Nicks' 2014 studio album 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault. The tour officially began on October 25, 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona at the Talking Stick Resort Arena, and it concluded on November 24, 2017 in Dunedin at the Forsyth Barr Stadium, lasting over one year.
The Best of Everything is a 2019 greatest hits album with recordings made by Tom Petty, with his backing band The Heartbreakers, as a solo artist, and with Mudcrutch. It was released on March 1.
"Outside the Rain" is a 1981 song by the American singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks. It is the ninth song off of Nicks' debut album, Bella Donna. Whilst never released as a single, it was featured on the B-side of "Leather and Lace". The song typically served as the opener for Nicks' concerts and typically transitioned into Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams".