Stephanie Lynn Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, and producer known for her work with the band Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. After starting her career as a duo with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, releasing the album Buckingham Nicks to little success, Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, helping the band to become one of the best-selling music acts of all time with over 120 million records sold worldwide. Rumours, the band’s second album with Nicks, became one of the best-selling albums worldwide, being certified 20× platinum in the US. In 1981, while remaining a member of Fleetwood Mac, Nicks began her solo career, releasing the studio album Bella Donna, which topped the Billboard 200 and has reached multiplatinum status. She has released eight studio solo albums and seven studio albums with Fleetwood Mac, selling a certified total of 65 million copies in the US alone.

After the release of her first solo album, Rolling Stone named her the “Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll”. Nicks was named one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time and one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. Her Fleetwood Mac songs “Landslide”, “Rhiannon”, and “Dreams”, with the last being the band’s only number one hit in the US, together with her solo hit “Edge of Seventeen”, have all been included in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. She is the first woman to have been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and then as a solo artist in 2019.

Nicks has garnered eight Grammy Award nominations and two American Music Award nominations as a solo artist. She has won numerous awards with Fleetwood Mac, including a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978 for Rumours. The albums Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Bella Donna have been included in the “Greatest of All Time Billboard 200 Albums” chart by Billboard.[10] Rumours was also rated the seventh-greatest album of all time in Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, as well as the fourth-greatest album by female acts.

Stephanie “Stevie” Nicks was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona to Jess and Barbara Nicks. Nicks is of German, English, Welsh and Irish ancestry. Nicks’ grandfather, Aaron Jess “A.J.” Nicks Sr., taught Nicks to sing duets with him by the time she was four years old. Nicks’ mother was protective, keeping her at home “more than most people” and fostered in her daughter a love of fairy tales. As a toddler, Stephanie could pronounce her own name only as “tee-dee”, which led to her nickname of “Stevie”.

Her father’s frequent relocation as a vice president of Greyhound had the family living in Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. With the Goya guitar that she received for her 16th birthday, Nicks wrote her first song, titled “I’ve Loved and I’ve Lost, and I’m Sad but Not Blue”. She spent her adolescence playing records constantly, and lived in her “own little musical world”.

While attending Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, she joined her first band, the Changing Times, a folk rock band focused on vocal harmonies. Nicks met her future musical and romantic partner, Lindsey Buckingham, during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. When she saw Buckingham playing “California Dreamin'” at Young Life club, she joined him in harmony. She recalled, “I thought he was a darling.” Buckingham was in a psychedelic rock band, Fritz, but two of its musicians were leaving for college. He asked Nicks in mid-1967 to replace the lead singer. Fritz later opened for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin from 1968 until 1970. Nicks credits both acts as having inspired her stage intensity and performance. Both Nicks and Buckingham attended San José State University, where Nicks majored in speech communication and planned to become an English teacher. With her father’s blessing, Nicks dropped out of college to pursue a musical career with Buckingham.

After Fritz disbanded in 1972, Nicks and Buckingham continued to write as a duo, recording demo tapes at night in Daly City, California, on a one-inch, four-track Ampex tape machine Buckingham kept at the coffee-roasting plant belonging to his father. They secured a deal with Polydor Records, and the eponymous Buckingham Nicks was released in 1973. The album was not a commercial success and Polydor dropped the pair. With no money coming in from their album, and Buckingham contracting mononucleosis shortly thereafter, Nicks began working multiple jobs. She waited tables and cleaned producer Keith Olsen’s house, where Nicks and Buckingham lived for a time before moving in with Richard Dashut. She was soon using cocaine. “We were told that it was recreational and that it was not dangerous,” Nicks told Chris Isaak in 2009.