“Gold Dust Woman” by Fleetwood Mac

"Gold Dust Woman" comes from Rumours, Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album, and it's Stevie Nicks' song from top to bottom: she wrote it and she sings it like a spell. It never got an A-side of its own, turning up on the flip of "Don't Stop" in Britain and "You Make Loving Fun" in America.

It began life as a simple folk tune that Nicks played to Lindsey Buckingham on acoustic guitar, and the band started cutting it two days later. As the sessions went on she pushed it somewhere darker, and Ken Caillat, who worked on the record, watched it creep up into something eerie. Buckingham's guitar coils and hisses, Christine McVie adds keyboards and synthesizer, John McVie's bass prowls, and Mick Fleetwood's drums and percussion clatter like bones. Demos on the 2004 reissue of Rumours show a coda melody that later grew into Nicks' solo song "If You Ever Did Believe", the theme from Practical Magic.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.