Timespace - The Best of Stevie Nicks

Album Review

With material produced by names such as Jon Bon Jovi, Danny Kortchmar, and Jimmy Iovine, Stevie Nicks' solo work singled her out as a prominent artist outside of her glory days with Fleetwood Mac. With a remarkable 11 Top 40 singles that spawned from only four solo albums, not including 1994's Street Angel, Nicks proved that her sometimes fragile, sometimes pleasingly sharp voice could stand up well without the backing of Lindsay Buckingham's revered guitar work. Timespace groups together her biggest songs and makes for a favorable compilation of her material. Only a few of her charted singles are left off Timespace, like 1982's "After the Glitter Fades" and "Needles and Pins," the other duet with Tom Petty. The beautiful "Leather and Lace," sung with Don Henley from her first album Bella Donna, is an obvious inclusion here, as is her highest charting single "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," taken from the same debut release. Nicks' surging vocal range thunders through "Stand Back," and even more so alongside the guitar thrust of "Edge of Seventeen," her most rock-induced single. Timespace captures the softer side of Nicks as well, best heard within the lushness of "Beauty and the Beast" and the wholehearted approach put forth on "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You." Capped off with her last big hit of the '80s in "Rooms on Fire" from the otherwise substandard The Other Side of the Mirror, this compilation is a splendid representation of her lone material.