Stevie Nicks is raising her voice once again.
The rock legend released a new pro-choice anthem “The Lighthouse” — her first new original solo track in four years — on Friday, Sept. 27.
“Don’t close your eyes and hope for the best / The dark is out there / The light is going fast / Until the final hours,” she sings. “Your life’s changed forever / And all the rights that you had yesterday / Are taken away / And now you’re afraid / You should be afraid.”
Nicks wrote the heavy, atmospheric song in 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that June, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.
“I find it very sad, at 76 years old, I had to see Roe v. Wade taken away,” Nicks tells PEOPLE exclusively in an email interview. “Two years ago, when I realized the consequences of women’s rights that are vanishing, I watched a lot of news, and I was like a sponge — it just went into me.”
Following the news, the Grammy winner and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee channeled that sadness into song.
“One morning I woke up… which, I never write when I wake up in the morning, and all of a sudden went, ‘I have my scars, I have my scars,’ so I just grabbed my notebook, and I started writing the whole thing,” she says. “It was a long-form poem, and I didn’t know what kind of song that would be. I found an instrumental that I loved and within two or three days, I had recorded the song. I never redid the vocal — it’s an original vocal — and it’s taken me two years.”
Stevie Nicks performs onstage at the 38th Annual Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony on November 03, 2023 in New York City.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Ever since, the Fleetwood Mac alum has been fine-tuning the track, working with some A-list collaborators along the way.
“This song has traveled around; it has been in the hands of many producers, of many musicians, of many people that have helped with it. Sheryl Crow, bless her, came in and was such a help with the production. Dave Cobb did the incredible classical guitar chords and was the first producer I worked with on the song,” she says. “I’ve been touring solidly for two years, so the whole time, we’ve been working on this song. I never thought it would take two years to get it to the point where it was perfect.”
The topic of women’s reproductive rights is a personal one for Nicks, who in 2020 revealed to The Guardian that she “would have had to walk away” from Fleetwood Mac if she didn’t get an abortion in 1979. Without the procedure, “I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac,” she added at the time.
Now, she tells PEOPLE, “All the stories that we tell about the necessity for women’s healthcare and the necessity for a safe and legal abortion option for women is absolutely necessary.”
Nicks wrote the track on Sept. 26, 2022.
“It seemed like overnight, people were saying, ‘What can we, as a collective force, do about this…’ For me, it was to write a song,” she said in a statement. “I have often said to myself, ‘This may be the most important thing I ever do.’ To stand up for the women of the United States and their daughters and granddaughters — and the men that love them. This is an anthem.”
Nicks — who has two remaining dates of her latest tour — is set to perform on Saturday Night Live for the first time in 41 years on Oct. 12.
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