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Creativity Quote by Christine McVie

"For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song"

About this Quote

In a band mythologized for drama and atmospherics, Christine McVie’s line quietly redraws the map: Stevie Nicks isn’t just a vibe merchant in chiffon, she’s a writer whose language sets the furniture in the room. The phrasing matters. “Prime importance” is almost politely blunt, like someone in the studio stating a fact everyone has learned the hard way. Then comes the real tell: the song “moves around” the words. That’s a reversal of the usual pop assembly line, where lyrics get bent to fit melody, rhyme, and radio length. McVie is describing a process where the lyric is the spine and the music has to accommodate its posture.

The subtext is respect with a thin edge of warning. If you’ve ever tried to edit a Nicks line, you can hear the producer’s headache: her images arrive preloaded with cadence and mystique, and they don’t want to be trimmed. So the band must build arrangement and phrasing that protect the spell, even when it complicates hooks or structure. It’s also a subtle portrait of Fleetwood Mac’s internal balance: McVie herself was a master of clean, melodic directness; Nicks trafficked in narrative fog and emotional theater. This sentence marks that difference without turning it into a fight.

Contextually, it nods to why Nicks’ songs feel like diaries with drum kits behind them. The music isn’t just accompaniment; it’s set dressing and weather, designed to keep the words in frame and let their strange little truths land.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
McVie, Christine. (2026, January 15). For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-stevie-the-words-are-of-prime-importance-the-168819/

Chicago Style
McVie, Christine. "For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-stevie-the-words-are-of-prime-importance-the-168819/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-stevie-the-words-are-of-prime-importance-the-168819/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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Song moves around the words not words around the song
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About the Author

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Christine McVie (July 12, 1943 - November 30, 2022) was a Musician from USA.

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