Her all-time low would come on Tango in the Night with the truly awful songs Welcome to the Room.Sara and When I See You Again. The beautiful, mystical Stevie of Rhiannon, the soulful, introspective Stevie of Landslide and the wise, broken-hearted Stevie of Dreams were increasingly replaced by a hard-bitten, drugged-out, braying SUPERSTAR on the skids. While I understand that some fans - particularly younger fans - love out-of-control, coked-out Stevie because she represents a hot mess of raw talent and because they know she would recover her footing, older fans like me find parts of The Wild Heart and Rock a Little rather alarming and sad. Her thoughts are scattered, the lyrics jump around and it all seems un-integrated and jittery. Lyrically, Stevie gave plenty of ammunition to detractors who said her songs were rambling and incoherent, and in too many places it feels as if her words spring from her own, insular drug-reality with little thought given to how they would land. The Rolling Stone review didn't help - the reviewer hyperbolically called the album a 'catastrophe' - but there was a grain of truth there. It was particularly noteworthy that her duet with Tom Petty wasn't chosen as a single, had little impact and is largely forgotten - nowhere near as effective as Insider or Stop Draggin' My Heart Around. While the epic title song, featuring Stevie's most daring-ever vocal (check out the 'wild, wild, wild, WIIIIILLLD HEART!' thriller at song's end), Sand Back, Sable on Blonde and Beauty and the Beast (another daring moment) showed Stevie at the top of her game, other songs (Gate and Garden, Nightbird, Nothing Ever Changes, If Anyone Falls) were comparative throwaways, indicating that there was a limit to how many worthwhile songs she could generate in a given space of time. Pushing her voice and her talent to the limit and fueled by ever-increasing amounts of cocaine, the album foreshadowed the frayed, burned-out and desperate Stevie of Rock a Little. While I appreciate The Wild Heart for its wildness and for some of its wonderful songs, this was the moment when Stevie began to unravel, although it wasn't necessarily apparent at the time.

Stevie nicks wild heart banner