Stevie Nicks says she’s taken about 500,000 pictures of her Barbie. And it’s not just any Barbie — it’s her Barbie, a doll made in her likeness and dressed in her iconic “Rumours” cover photo outfit.
Nicks, 75, announced the news of her own Barbie during her show at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 1. Before the performance, the Fleetwood Mac singer shares with TODAY.com how she was able to start living in Barbie Land months before the rest of us, how she thinks her songwriting influences Taylor Swift and how she pictures her life once she's finished touring.
“I have been living in my own Barbie Universe since March,” Nicks says. “And I can honestly say that this little person makes me happy. And that’s the thing I love about her the most. I can be in the worst, worst mood, and I walk in and see her — she’s like my happy pill. I instantly feel better. I have so many reasons to love her.”
The origin story of 'Stevie Barbie'
Nicks tells TODAY.com about how her own Barbie journey began in March, when Mattel approached her about creating a Music Series Barbie, joining the ranks of artists like Tina Turner, Elton John, Gloria Estefan and David Bowie, who have all been honored with their own dolls.
While on the phone with Mattel, Nicks says she learned the company wanted to portray her in the iconic outfit she wore in the cover image for “Rumours,” Fleetwood Mac’s hit 1977 album. Nicks says once she heard about Mattel’s interest in the outfit, she knew exactly what to do.
“I’ll go into my vault and I will find the original ‘Rumours’ outfit and I will send it to you,” Nicks recalls telling Mattel. “I’ll also send the original boots — they were suede, and I didn’t expect to get suede boots because that would be way too hard — but if you can copy these boots with a little, teeny tiny platform, you can get it.”
Nicks takes a moment to reflect on the outfit itself, noting that while the velvet wrap blouse and skirt were only slightly dressier than a casual outfit, she knew the look would stand the test of time.
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“When I first got that outfit, and I stood back and looked at it in the mirror, and the boots, I just went like, ‘Damn, that is a great outfit, and that outfit will still look great when you’re 60,’” she says. “Because it’s not out there. It’s not age inappropriate at any age. It’s beautiful, it’s sophisticated. The boots are gorgeous, and this will be your uniform for your life.”
A few months after the call, Nicks received what she called the first prototype of her Barbie, and she could not stop staring at the boots. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, these are real,’” she says.
After detailing that she wanted her Barbie to have a rounder face and for the eye makeup to be more like Twiggy, the British model known for her dramatic eye looks, Mattel sent her a second Barbie, which she received in June.
“I was freaked out completely because I had to sit there while they were opening it, you know, like, ‘Oh, my God, hurry up,'” she says with a laugh.
Out came “New Barbie,” as Nicks calls her, and she knew the doll was perfect — down to the bangs and the boots.
“Let’s call Mattel and tell them she is perfect. Don’t do anything — perfect. And so ever since then, and that was like June 22. And it’s, what, September? I have probably taken, I don’t know, 500,000 pictures of her,” Nicks says with a laugh, adding, “and also the first Barbie, who is now her older sister.”
Taking photos of her doll while on tour is just one of the things she loves about her Barbie, Nicks says, then sharing that she, in fact, did write down all of the reasons she loved her before our interview, and started listing them off.
“She’s the ‘Rumours’ me, when I was 29 years old. But she’s also me now. It sounds impossible, but it’s not impossible somehow,” she says. “Maybe that’s just the spirit of her — the spirit of Stevie Barbie and the spirit of me, blended together in this little person and it just emanates from her.”
Nicks continues: “She’s the memory and she’s the present — and everything in between.”
Forgotten memories unlocked and a friend in Taylor Swift
One of the reasons Nicks says she loves her Barbie? Let her explain in her own words.
“First of all, it’s like seeing my younger self. She brings back memories that I had forgotten. When I look at her I think of stuff that has gone out of my mind,” Nicks says.
Nicks says her Barbie reminds her of how she got into songwriting at 15 after a couple of months of guitar lessons. After writing “some good songs” between 16 and 18, she got a record deal with 20th Century Fox for five years.
“They signed me and thank goodness the producer had a clause in his contract that said if he left, he could take his artists. He decided to leave and so he took me and that released me because if that hadn’t happened, guess what? I would have never been able to be in a band with Lindsey (Buckingham) or go on to be in the band with Fleetwood Mac, because I would’ve been signed.”
While those early days taught her the importance of songwriting, she clarifies she never writes songs: “They’re always poems,” Nicks says, before she looks at them as songs.
At the heart of her poems and songs is the truth, she says, which she believes is why people are able to connect to her lyrics so much — paving the way for artists like Taylor Swift.
“I never don’t tell the truth. And I think that’s something that if Taylor Swift, who is my friend, if Taylor got anything from me, that’s what she got. I don’t ever lie in my songs — if you broke up with me, I don’t put I broke up with you. I tell the truth, always,” Nicks says.
“And that, I think, is a really good place to start as a writer, and I think that’s maybe why my songs connect with people — is because I’m telling them their own story. Everything that happens to me, basically happens to everybody else, in just different ways, different forms, but nevertheless, it’s the same premise,” Nicks continues. “You know, you fall in love. Somebody breaks up with you. Your heart is broken. You break up with them, their heart is broken. You feel bad because you broke up with them and their heart is broken and vice versa. And that’s really the Shakespearean tragedy of most love songs. And then of course your mom says, 'You’ll get through it, you always do.' And you do.”
Life after touring: Scotland, a 'secret poetry book' and a wolfhound
Nicks is currently traveling the globe on her “Stevie Nicks: Live in Concert” tour, though she clarifies she has rarely stopped touring in her career.
“I always was a person who said, 'I’m never going to make a comeback. Because I’m never going to go away,'” she says.
Nicks recalls playing in Kansas City, Missouri, this summer in 104-degree heat, before performing in Boston, where it poured so hard she could barely see and breathe.
“It rained from the second before we went on until we went off — I had to wear a hat for the first time in, probably, my life,” she adds.
“But you know what, we got through it. Because as my mom used to say, 'You'll get through it — you always do.' And, she’s always right. I always do,” Nicks says. “It’s like I never look at my career as something that’s ever going to really end because there’s a whole lot of things that I’ve put off in my life to tour as much as I do.”
Nicks reveals she did tell her band and crew about the Barbie, mostly so she could take photos of the doll in green rooms and around the venues, but she “swore them to secrecy or else they’d be fired.”
As for her future, when she’s decided she’s done touring, Nicks already has an idea of what her life may look like.
“When I look at (Barbie) and when I look at myself, I’ll probably tour for another four or five years and then I’ll probably decide to rent a castle in Scotland and go and write, in a whole kind of romantic way, and sit in front of a big, huge, massive fireplace and maybe get a huge wolfhound,” Nicks says. “And have somebody else train it for me and deliver it at six months, fully trained, and then I’ll be sitting there with my huge dog — I have a tiny Chinese crested right now, who is really jealous of Barbie.”
She adds she has a “secret poetry book” that she will “someday release” of poems she wrote that she never turned into songs.
“If they work themselves into being a song, then I’m really happy,” she explains about her poems. “If they don’t, then they’re going to go in that secret poetry book that I will someday release.”
“I have all of the songs before they were songs, so they’re slightly different,” she adds.
“So that’s kind of my life, and now I’m sitting here, looking at Barbie. She’s (me at) 29 and I’m thinking, ‘Wow Barbie, we have been through a lot and we’re still going,’ and she’s looking at me going like, ‘You’re so irritating with that camera, like stop taking pictures of me,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, but that will never happen. I’ll photograph you until I drop dead,’” she says while laughing.
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