Every songwriter has a first song. Some actually make the cut while others are lost in time–and/or shunned by the artist for their cringe factor. According to Stevie Nicks, her first song was the moment she realized what she wanted to do with her life. The track, though fairly elementary compared to Nicks’ later work, has the same sentiments as many of her biggest songs: love and heartbreak. Learn more about Nicks’ first song, below.
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The First Song Stevie Nicks Ever Wrote
According to Nicks, the first song she ever wrote was penned after her sixteenth birthday. After having suffered a breakup, Nicks sat down with her new guitar and worked out “I’ve Loved and I’ve Lost, and I’m Sad but Not Blue.” The lyrics were inspired by a friend going out with a boy she had fallen head over heels for.
I’ve loved and I’ve lost and I’m sad but not blue / I once loved a boy who was wonderful and true / But he loved another before he loved me / And I knew he still wanted her, it was easy to see, were the lyrics to this early Nicks track.
“When I said, I’m sad but not blue, I was accepting the fact that they were going to be together,” Nicks once said. “I was horrified, but I really loved both of them, and I knew they didn’t do it purposefully to hurt me.”
Nicks looks back on that heartbreak with gratitude. She credits that early relationship as having jumpstarted the career she now enjoys.
“The day before my 16th birthday I got my guitar,” Nicks once said. “And on my birthday, then I wrote a song about my first love affair… It was a relationship at 15-and-a-half, where I was absolutely crazy about this guy. And he broke up with me. Thank God he broke up with me, because if he hadn’t… I wouldn’t have been spurred on to write that song… I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t have been for that. And when that song was done, I knew that I was going to be a songwriter. And I think my mom and dad knew it too.”
Luckily for all of us, Nicks decided to continue on that path and become the once-in-a-generation talent that we know and love today. She has continued to channel matters of the heart into her songwriting. Many of her biggest hits dwell on relationships. That affinity was born out of the simple song, below.
(Photo by Michael Kovac/WireImage)
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