Long-time fans will recognize the circuitous journey this particular Stevie Nicks song has taken.
“Twisted” began, as all of them do on the forthcoming 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault, as a stripped-down demo — featuring just Nicks, a ruminative guitar and a beat box. She accompanied herself on a double-tracked vocal back then, approaching the lyric with a fragility that will sound familiar to anyone who’s followed her work over the years. In that way, this version doesn’t tend to speak to the power it might one day possess.
Later, Lindsey Buckingham collaborated on a sleek update included on the 1996 film Twister. The intertwining of their voices gives “Twisted” another dimension, to be sure. But as Buckingham takes a verse for himself, then adds an edgy guitar, it seems as if Stevie Nicks has become a bit player in her own song. “Twisted” would go on to make the odd appearance as part of Nicks’ stage show, memorably in 1998 at Woodstock, but it retained the big-production sweep of the soundtrack version — and little of the pathos of the original.
Her completed take for 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault — due October 7, 2014 — finds the middle ground between both eras, recapturing the wounded fragility of her earliest passes even while Stevie Nicks fills out the empty spaces — but without over-decorating. Based now on a sharp acoustic figure, tastefully completed with an anthemic conclusion, “Twisted” seems at last to have found its true voice.
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