Wednesday, May 18, 2011

#idol Recap of Haley Singing Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac a Stevie Nicks Penned Song

[From Wednesday's American Idol Show]

Haley Reinhart sings “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac on American Idol 2011.

RobotCeleb

Fleetwood Mac came back big on Glee a couple of weeks ago and last night Stevie Nicks was on Dancing With The Stars. Tonight, American Idol finalist Haley Reinhart channeled her inner Stevie Nicks as she performed “Rhiannon” live. Jimmy Iovine chose the song for Haley and despite it being a little windy on the Idol stage; Haley Reinhart did the song justice. Can she win American Idol Season 10?





By Brian Mansfield,


Watching Haley audition, I'm more convinced than ever that she's improved as much as any top-three contestant I've ever seen. The voice was there from the beginning, but she has learned how to use it better and how to present herself.

Haley says remembering the words will be a challenge as she sings Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon. "From the minute I met you, I felt you should sing a Stevie Nicks song," he says. Haley's a Stevie Nicks fan, via her mother.

Haley gets smoke and dramatic black-and-white lighting for Rhiannon, which begins with only piano accompaniment before kicking into a more Mac-like arrangement for the second verse, at which point a wind machine kicks up underneath her, blowing her hair and her dress every which way. More than Scotty or Lauren, Haley knows how present a song, and the show's producers are giving her every opportunity to show off that skill. Good performance, great TV.

For me, Round Two goes to Haley, too, though Scotty came close.

And, at this point, even the awkward banter with the judges is playing to her favor.

"You're in a zone right now," Randy says. "You're just having a good time right now. ... I would grow my hair out if I could have the whole wind thing."

"You remind me of why I fell in love with Stevie Nicks to begin with," says Steven.

"It was a really beautiful moment," Jennifer says, "and you looked really beautiful on camera. ... It was a nice contrast to what you did earlier."

From the judges, Round Two is a mixed result: Steven goes for Lauren Alaina, while Jennifer and Randy (and Jimmy) go for Scotty.

"It's going to be an interesting finish," says Ryan, pointing out that Neil Sedaka is sitting next to Jimmy.

Nicks Pics... Dancing With The Stars

Well these are pretty awesome! [Stevie Pics I mean]

Looks like these were taken possibly during rehearals prior to Dancing With The Stars airing... Not sure.


Happy as a clam! Met my goddess! on Twitpic Finally met #StevieNicks - yay! on Twitpic


Photos by Kamela Brewer at @kamelabrewer on Twitter

Stevie Nicks gets personal on her new album

The singer opens up about the inspiration for each song on 'In Your Dreams'

[If you buy the itunes version of Stevie's new album... All this song inspiration below is part of the cd booklet within itunes]

Stevie Nicks released her new album In Your Dreams last week and it's a hit, coming in at #6 on the charts. The veteran songstress recently sat down to open up to fans about the inspiration behind 'In Your Dreams' 13 tracks. Check out what she has to say:

SECRET LOVE - I love this song. I still do not remember exactly who it is about...I wrote it a very long time ago. Life was moving very fast in the late '70s...Love was everywhere. We were beautiful. I saw everything through a sort of stained glass window of perfection. It was a pretty spectacular time and I think the song represents many relationships, not only mine, but lots of people at that time. I was living in a pink Spanish house which belonged to silent film stars. I wrote a lot of songs there and this was one of them. I didn't completely remember the song and amazingly discovered an early version of it on YouTube.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH – Somewhere in the '90s – in my post Klonopin era (a drug that almost destroyed me)– I'd just come out of 47 days in rehab. I was trying to recover. I was petrified of life with no tranquilizers. I was afraid to come back into the real world. Someone appeared out of nowhere. An angel stepped in. He arrived and walked me through and he saved my spiritual life. I think it's a reminder for everyone that sometimes when you are filled with fear or pain, someone arrives and takes you by the hand and helps you on your journey.

IN YOUR DREAMS - This was another difficult time in my life and when I was on the road touring my sound engineer would hear me say, "I can't do it...I can't go up there." And he would say, "Stevie, I'm right at the other end of this cord." His words of assurance that I would sound good made me feel safe.

WILD SARGASSO SEA – This song is based on the book and movie of the same title. It is the precursor to Jane Eyre. It was about Mr. Rochester falling in love with Antoinette and how he felt the moment he met her on the island. They both went mad but Antoinette Rochester never recovered and was locked up.

PHOTOS | VIDEO: Stevie Nicks Dancing With The Stars

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, multi-Grammy award winner and living legend Stevie Nicks came to perform two songs. Loved how she got into the spirit of “DWTS” with her skirt of many fabrics and chain mail on her gloves, and that lasso move that she made at the end of her performance of her single “Secret Love,” which featured bare-chested Dmitry Chaplin making sweet ballroom love to Anna Trebunskaya on the judges table, as well as Peta Murgatroyd and bare-chested Damian Whitewood. Stevie followed that up with a rendition of the classic Fleetwood Mac hit “Landslide,” with Cheryl and Tony Dovolani in classic black and white doing a classic rumba on the dance floor. Did I mention how classic this was? Also instant classic: the fact that Stevie had chains on her microphone stand, which only solidified the “DWTS” rock star that she is.

Los Angeles Times | On The Red Carpet












Buy on itunes


Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Stevie Nicks on Dancing With The Stars

Well... She finally made her first prime time appearance promoting 'In Your Dreams'!... and the first prime time performance of 'Secret Love'. Stevie looked really great, wore the boots, was rocking the wavey hair she's been sporting lately and it looked like she was wearing a new skirt on the outfit... It was nice.  She sounds like she still has some residual of the flu and pneumonia that she caught on the day her new album was released (May 3rd). But I think she pulled it off! Plus given it was LIVE I'm sure she was a little nervous knowing the size of the Dancing With The Stars TV audience.  Vocally on 'Secret Love' you could hear a bit of a rasp in her voice and she may have been slightly out of tune in places... But like I said given that she's only just getting over the flu and pneumonia where she had to cancel shows and other appearances on the east coast - I think she did really well.

Landslide sounded much better vocally. The song was cut down for the show but still sounded like the great Landslide!

It seems it doesn't matter what TV show any of these live performers play on, it never really sounds right. Even on the award shows where there are a lot of live performances, you would think it would be perfect, but it isn't... there's just something missing... I'm sure it's the way it's mixed.










Second Week US Sales for "In Your Dreams" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours"

[update May 18th] Stevie's album will land at #16 on Billboard Magazine's Top 200 in it's 2nd week - not #17 as Hits Daily Double suggested.  Total sales numbers yet to be confirmed by Billboard.

Stevie Nicks "In Your Dreams" second week sales in the US = 20,055. Hits Daily Double is showing the album drops down to # 17 with a 57% decrease in sales - which is somewhat typical for classic artists to take a dive in the second week.

Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" album that sprang back onto the Top 200 Album Charts in the US last week at # 11 with roughly 30k in sales will be at approx. # 38 on the Billboard chart when it's published later this week. Sales for this past week as reported by Hits Daily Double are 12,072 which is really impressive for an album 34 years old.