I’ve enjoyed BRNDA’s music for years and am glad they survived (surviving?) the pandemic. While working on this week’s recommendations I listened to their 2021 LP, Do You Like Salt?, on repeat. The 10 track, 22 minute album, gets in and out, planting a few ear worms along the way.

I asked drummer and singer Leah Gage for a song she wishes she wrote. She chose a song longer than anything by BRNDA with more words than any song on her newest record.

BRNDA plays Pie Shop Friday, January 21 with Grocer and Day Bidet. Do You Like Salt?, is available as a digital download, vinyl or CD.

I love listening to the radio in the car. This habit grew out of years of driving vehicles with no other viable music option, but eventually I grew to enjoy the randomness of chance hitting the scan button, and the joy that comes from landing on something you actually want to hear. One of my current favorite strategies for increasing that chance is 94.7 The Drive. They’re typically all 80s all the time, and rotate the same songs throughout the course of a month or two. But this month, the 2003 live version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” has been getting some major play. Whether you like the 2003 live version or the 1975 studio version, neither is particularly “80’s” and so it’s always a treat to hear either version on The Drive.  

The song came on again this week and I had to sit in the parking lot of Ace Hardware to make it to the end. Flooded with the nostalgia of that familiar feeling of being afraid of changing, I thought “Shit! I wish I’d written this song!” And so Brandon’s message asking me if I’d write a piece about a song I wish I’d written couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. 

“Landslide” is credited as a Fleetwood Mac song but it was actually written by Stevie Nicks before she and Lindsey Buckingham ever joined Mick Fleetwood’s band. It captures her apprehension of being a touring musician and continuing on in her professional relationship with Buckingham, who was also her lover. She says she wrote it one day (in one day?!) in Aspen, Colorado, feeling lonely and unsure of her life’s direction, tied as it was to her partner Lindsey who was at the time out on tour with the Everly Brothers.

In my reading of the lyrics, her apprehension never resolves, though supposedly Stevie’s take is that this song was her decision to stick with the life of writing music and touring with her lover Lindsey, according to later interviews. Maybe she means that in the end, the landslide brought down those questions and cemented her decision. But when I think of her sitting alone and broke in Aspen writing this song waiting for her partner to return from tour, I’m not so sure this achingly beautiful song full of question marks reflects any kind of strong decision-making. Who among us cannot relate to the feeling of apprehension in one’s life direction? It may be especially prevalent in those early-to-mid 20s, which I’m long past, but that question – Can I handle the seasons of my life? – persists.

Stevie Nicks has never shied away from singing songs squarely directed at someone else on stage. This is so brave, to write a song about someone who you know will be performing it with. But the outcome is so worth it – it makes performances so raw and compelling. Hearing, or watching, Stevie and Lindsey perform this song together hurts so good. Usually when songs are written about another bandmate, a romantic relationship is also somehow involved (See also “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” by Culture Club). But being in a band is one of the most complicated relationships I have ever experienced, even when sex and relationships aren’t on the table. The band I’m in, BRNDA, has seen many iterations of humans, and the loss of each bandmate has hurt me deeply. In fact, the lyrics of “Perfect World” were inspired by the loss of a bandmate and feelings of being left behind. But, my version of a song about a bandmate is not terribly earnest. Nor does it come close to the directness of the line “I’ve been afraid of changin cause I built my life around you.” Damn. I am not worthy, Stevie, but I definitely won’t touch that dial whenever “Landslide” comes on the radio.

Recommend If You Like pays all our writers. Not everyone does. If you've enjoyed anything we've done, cool. We have a Patreon. If you can't afford to become a patron, please sign up to our mailing list. It's free and we're asking here instead of a pop-up.