Stevie Nicks manages to harness the serene blend of gentle lilt and witchy wonder

Stevie Nicks brings solo show to Toronto for one-of-a-kind night to remember: REVIEW

Fleetwood Mac frontwoman was supposed to perform on Aug. 15, but fractured her shoulder.

Jane Stevenson

Toronto Sun

Stevie Nicks

Scotiabank Arena

Saturday night

RATING: **** (4 out of 4)

No one can accuse Stevie Nicks — now 77 years old — of fading away.

So it should come as no surprise that the formidable Fleetwood Mac frontwoman with a unique style all her own began her solo show on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena with a cover of Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away.

Backed by an eight-piece band including seasoned guitarist Waddy Wachtel — whose licks stood out on such highlights as Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, Stand Back and Edge of Seventeen — Nicks has lost the high heels on her signature black suede boots and the black top hat but otherwise remains quintessentially Stevie.

Head to toe black velvet top and chiffon skirt, check. Long shawls, check. Long blond hair in curls, check. Endearing commentary between songs, check. And that beautiful voice and those classic songs, check.

After the Buddy Holly cover, Nicks ventured into solo territory on If Anyone Falls and Outside The Rain before getting to the night’s first big moment with Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams.

The next crowd-pleaser was Stop Dragging My Heart Around with Wachtel filling in on Tom Petty’s vocal parts.

Nicks explained she’d made no secret of wanting to join Petty’s band on more than one occasion and later performed his hit, Free Fallin’, while photos of them in concert together were displayed on a huge screen behind the stage.

She also paid tribute to her fallen Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie, during the emotional show-ending Landslide which followed the Fleetwood Mac chesnut, Rhiannon, during the encore as photos of them on stage and off were shown.

Nicks explained early on in the evening that the Toronto performance was a make-up show for a previously scheduled Aug. 15 date which had to be postponed, along with other concerts, after she fractured her shoulder, which required her to lie in bed for a month.

THE TWIRL STILL THRILLS

Still walking gingerly around the stage during the one hour and 40 minute set, Nicks briefly performed her signature twirl a few times which caused the audience to roar.

And whenever she brought a new shawl out to wear — at last count three including a gold one for Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman — it was like she had brought antiquities on stage for everyone to marvel over. (She explained they were originals from the time she recorded the songs.)

Such is Nicks’ exquisitely designed myth-making.

She also explained that Fleetwood Mac’s Gypsy, which she also performed, was written while she and former love and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham were in the early stages of their careers with the requisite highs and lows. (They were Buckingham-Nicks before joining Fleetwood Mac in 1975, breaking up in 1976 and greatly contributing to the band’s juggernaut release, Rumours, in 1977.)

Nicks told us to make herself stay grounded during those early days she used to pull their mattress off its bedspring and put it on the floor with a beautiful cover she’d found and sit on it and say over and over: “I’m still Stevie.”

All these years later, she certainly is, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

SET LIST

Not Fade Away

If Anyone Falls

Outside the Rain

Dreams

Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around

The Lighthouse

Wild Heart / Bella Donna

Stand Back

Free Fallin’

Gypsy

Gold Dust Woman

Edge of Seventeen

ENCORE

Rhiannon

Landslide

With whimsy and chatter, Stevie Nicks brings a steady, cautious stream of hits to Toronto

The legendary Fleetwood Mac vocalist was fanciful and steady across a compact, career-spanning set. 

By Hayden Godfrey

Toronto Star

Stevie Nicks

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025 at Scotiabank Arena

For as long as she’s been draping ribboned scarves over her microphone stand, Stevie Nicks has trafficked in verbs, not attributes. Actions, not texts. She rasps, she enchants, she twirls and she mystifies.

Even at 77, she manages to harness the serene blend of gentle lilt and witchy wonder that has made her one of the most revered performers of the last half-century.

Still, her 14-song Saturday night jaunt at Scotiabank Arena — the rescheduled seventh-to-last stop on her North American tour — was a mixed bag, blending solo highlights with somewhat underwhelming renditions of all-time classics.

“Yes, me and my barely-coming-back-together shoulder are here to see you tonight,” she said, alluding to the reason for having to postpone the gig in the first place.

Going back to her days as an angelic California rock heroine, Nicks’ vocals have oscillated carefully between two distinct shades: girlishly tender and huskily gravelly. She could be as light as Joni or as gritty as Joplin, embodying each tonal chassis with ease and comfort depending on the mood.

Now, all that remains is the thin version of the latter, which works well on some reworked classics (“Gypsy,” “Stand Back”), but falls flat on others (“Bella Donna,” “If Anyone Falls”), giving her limited set list a bit of an uneven feel.

Fleetwood Mac fans, luckily, were well-served by the breadth of nostalgic material, even if the quality of those arrangements was subpar when compared to their full-band contemporaries. “Gold Dust Woman” shimmered with sorcery despite its attempted rework into a thumping, glitzy arena rocker, while “Rhiannon” and “Dreams” remain the classics they always were. As a tear-jerking closer, “Landslide” is as pertinent as ever, with Nicks’ more mature, almost owlish delivery elevating what was already a lyrical triumph to an eternal opus.

But there’s an almost intangible magnetism missing from them when performed outside the charged, visceral confines of a Fleetwood Mac performance. Her band, captained by longtime lead guitarist and musical director Waddy Wachtel (James Taylor, Warren Zevon) and garnished by vocal deputy Sharon Celani, do a fine job backing up Nicks’ vocals, but they’re a far cry from the chemistry, rawness and subtle finesse of Nicks’ erstwhile Mac bandmates.

Some of her solo cuts, though, still sound great. “Edge of Seventeen” is ever the showstopper, especially in its extended form, while “Outside the Rain” glistens with her trademark marvellous poise. She even threw in a cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” for good measure, complete with a wistful slide show of pictures of the two from tours and songwriting sessions past.

As she’ll likely be the first to tell you, Nicks does little in the way of stage antics or quirks, perhaps in part due to her recent injury; she’ll sway, do a spin or two and mimic an electric guitar during a crunchy riff, but nothing that compares to her majestic stagecraft of old.

But she partially mitigated her lack of mobility (and available, famed duet partners) with charming, albeit wordy stories of her globe-trotting past, lending an underlying grace to her presence. Whether she’s waltzing through poetic stanzas or wrapping herself in coloured capes, she is, unmistakably, still Stevie Nicks.

“Keep dancing,” she encouraged, before shifting to a decidedly goofier anecdote in her closing message. “In the middle of the night, when I get up and go to the kitchen, I dance all the way there and all the way back, and I love it!”

She doesn’t move mountains like she used to, but for the misty mass of flowy skirt-and-shawl-wearing acolytes of all ages, Nicks is still kicking, with a childlike attitude and the same delicate get-up to boot. And with a career this rich and filled with gauzy mythology, that’s enough.