.png)
.png)
The 15 Best Remixes Of 2020
4. “Edge Of Midnight (Midnight Sky Remix)” — Miley Cyrus & Stevie Nicks
Mashing Stevie Nicks’ “Edge Of Seventeen” with Miley Cyrus’ “Midnight Sky” is a stroke of genius.
Stevie Nicks lending her voice to Miley Cyrus’ “Midnight Sky” is an intergenerational collaboration for the ages.
- Idolator
Of all the disciples to worship at the altar of Stevie Nicks, none have managed to capture the attention of rock’s reigning priestess quite like Harry Styles.
Last year, when Styles inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he proclaimed the 72-year-old “everything you’ve ever wanted in a lady, a lover, in a friend.” Nicks has gushed about him in interviews as everything from “the son she never had” to her “love child” with bandmate Mick Fleetwood. Styles earned her official seal of approval after covering “The Chain” every night of his first solo tour in support of a record that sounds closer to Crosby, Stills & Nash than anything he released under his prior band.
“Harry could’ve lost a lot of fans, but he didn’t,” Nicks recently told Vogue over the phone. “I’m so proud of him because he took a risk and didn’t go the One Direction route. He loves One Direction, I love One Direction, and a gazillion other people do too, but Harry didn’t wanna go the pop route. He wanted straight-up rock and roll circa 1975.”
Nicks has been embracing some of the busiest years of her dual careers as both Fleetwood Mac frontwoman and solo sorceress—and doing so amid a global pandemic. Since she last performed with Styles at the Forum for his Fine Line release show in December, she’s released a 24 Karat Gold concert film and “Show Them the Way,” her politically minded single and first piece of original music in six years. After Miley Cyrus asked for Nicks’s blessing before releasing her “Edge of Seventeen”–tinged “Midnight Sky,” the two joined forces for an exhilarating new mash-up titled “Edge of Midnight.”
In honor of Styles making history as the magazine’s first solo cover boy, Nicks caught up with Vogue to answer all our questions about their cosmic connection. Currently beachside with her quarantine bubble in Hawaii, she’s been doing what one would expect Stevie Nicks to be up to during a pandemic: writing new music, dancing around her house to “Watermelon Sugar,” and “casting little spells.” As befitting rock’s foremost storyteller, our intended 30-minute chat turned into a two-hour confessional about her love of Styles, working with Cyrus for the first time, joining Fleetwood Mac, the president-elect Joe Biden, the Met Gala, betta fish funerals, and much more.
Your assistant just texted me a photo of the most gorgeous sunset I’ve ever seen. Where are you calling from?
We just got to Maui. It’s turning winter in Los Angeles, and I live close to the beach, where it’s colder than anywhere else in Southern California. Me and my quarantine buddies had a little break where we thought we could come over safely, so we did.
Did you bring your dogs along?
Yes. We have three—two Chinese cresteds and one Yorkshire—and they’re thrilled. I think this pandemic affected them too because they’re travelers. It’s just a two-week trip, but we brought enough stuff to last us a year. I don’t really come out of my room much since I don’t go to bed until seven in the morning and typically sleep until three—and that’s whether I’m in L.A. or London. Wherever I go, I still end up having breakfast at five in the afternoon.
Last time we spoke you talked about the inspiration behind writing “Show Them the Way” around the time of the 2008 election and waiting all these years release it until you felt the moment was right. How does it feel now to finally have it out in the world?
By Chris Willman - Variety
Because it’s not enough for just one vintage Stevie Nicks song to have reentered the zeitgeist (see: the TikTok “Dreams” resurgence), Miley Cyrus is doing her best to make sure that history quickly repeats itself by pushing another Nicks favorite, “Edge of Seventeen,” back into public prominence.
Late Thursday night, Miley released what is officially deemed “Edge of Midnight (Midnight Sky Remix),” a track that mashes up her own current single, “Midnight Sky,” a top 20 hit released in August, with “Edge of Seventeen,” the hit that appeared on Nicks’ first solo album, “Bella Donna,” back in 1981.
Although no details were immediately released about the track apart from the two singers’ respective tweets, it does appear that Nicks participated in the remix to the extent of lending her voice to Cyrus’ new song, too, as it appears in the conjoined mix, which starts off with Waddy Wachtel’s unmistakable 16th-note guitar riff.
“Stevie Nicks has always been my idol & an inspiration. It’s an honor to now call her my friend and collaborator,” Cyrus wrote on Instagram. Among the immediate responses were triply repeated fire emoji from fan Kacey Musgraves. Nicks herself posted: “Miley…Magical! Loved singing with her!”
Cyrus had previously acknowledged getting Nicks’ approval to sample “Seventeen” for the original track, in which the interpolation is far more subtle. The singer said on Jimmy Fallon’s show that she contacted Nicks and “said, ‘I have an alternate melody if you don’t want to kind of like pay tribute to you and your greatness and how much you’ve inspired me.’ And she said, ‘You can borrow from me anytime.'”
The idea of a more overt mashup of the two songs had already achieved some popularity before this official release. YouTube user Kelly Green, who goes under the name “kelexandra,” combined the two songs in a series of videos that have accumulated more than a million views since the first of them was uploaded August 15.
Cyrus’ official mashup is not the first time a major pop star has felt compelled to adopt Nicks’ classic as part of a new song. Destiny’s Child sampled Wachtel’s guitar part on “Edge of Seventeen” for the trio’s “Bootylicious” smash in 2001, and although Nicks didn’t appear on the track itself, she did put in a cameo in the video.
Nicks has openly admitted doing some nicking herself, when she based another early solo hit, “Stand Back,” on something she picked out of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” although few probably would have noticed any similarity if she didn’t point it out. In her new concert film, “24 Karat Gold,” Nicks tells the story of calling up Prince to tell him she was borrowing an element from his hit and inviting him to the studio to get his seal of approval.
Cyrus’ new album, “Plastic Hearts,” is due Nov. 27.
