How ‘Crystal’ Became the Ultimate Stevie-Lindsey Song

There’s a scene in the beginning of Practical Magic, where a young Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock’s character, played by Camilla Belle) casts a spell on herself to ensure she’ll never fall in love. She retrieves herbs and white flower petals, putting them into a wooden bowl that she holds up to the evening sky. As the ingredients magically rise and fly towards the full moon, Stevie Nicks’ “Crystal” begins to play, the hypnotic violin swirling through the darkness. 

By the time Practical Magic hit theaters in October 1998, “Crystal” was 25 years old, and had lived more lives than most witches. It’s been recorded three separate times: in 1973, with Nicks’ then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, on their joint album Buckingham Nicks; a second time in 1975, with Fleetwood Mac, after the couple joined the band; and then a third time by Nicks herself, for Practical Magic. (Nicks wrote “Crystal,” but she didn’t sing it until the film; Buckingham took the lead on the first two versions.)

But we’re in 2025 now. Why are we still talking about this song and its many iterations, all these years later? Well, because we’re still having crystal visions. Last month, Buckingham Nicks was reissued after being out of print for decades, giving us a renewed appreciation for the record that was essentially their ticket into Fleetwood Mac — and the delicate but incredibly powerful ballad inside it. “Crystal” isn’t a world-famous, viral-moment-generating Nicks hit like “Dreams,” but it’s the gold thread that weaves together the entire history of Stevie and Lindsey, with each recording representing a different era of their relationship toward one another. That history is full of ups and downs, but “Crystal” has always been there. The crystalline knowledge runs deep.

“Crystal” is a classic Stevie gem, a song about listening to your intuition (“Do you always trust your first initial feeling?”) across a mystical, Tolkien-esque backdrop of nature. We hear about the sea, clear water fountains, and — her favorite — mountains. (Stevie loves to sing about mountains. Just think about those lyrics in “Landslide” and “Leather and Lace.”) She wrote it years before she was famous, before all the shawls and white winged doves, for Buckingham, her new boyfriend and bandmate. “I’d written the song about him and me when things were good,” she told David Fricke in the liner notes for the Buckingham Nicks reissue. “I said, ‘You sing it to me.’” 

She met Buckingham in 1966, years before they became a couple, at a youth group social in the Bay Area, where they duetted on “California Dreamin.’” The first recording of “Crystal,” sung by Lindsey on Buckingham Nicks, sounds like a distant Laurel Canyon cousin of the Mamas and Papas classic. The fact that legendary session players like guitarist Waddy Wachtel and drummer Jim Keltner play on it only makes it that much more California. It opens with a twinkly guitar and gently builds on the chorus, as Nicks lends some sunny harmonies. 

“Crystal” is one of the Buckingham Nicks tracks that producer Keith Olsen played for Mick Fleetwood, when he was essentially auditioning to produce Fleetwood Mac’s next album. Not only did Olsen get the job, but so did Buckingham and Nicks, who joined the band in December 1974. For 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, the couple brought the band several songs, including “Landslide,” “Monday Morning,” and “Rhiannon.” Another contribution was “Crystal,” which they reprised for the album. This version of the song is more polished, glowing in a mid-Seventies pop sheen, while Buckingham’s vocals are quieter. When he sings, “Do you always trust your first initial feeling?” it sounds like a question he’s whispering in Stevie’s ear.

Years later, Nicks recorded “Crystal” yet again, only now she was finally singing lead on her own song. This version, produced by Sheryl Crow, plays more than once in Practical Magic, alongside her other Crow collaboration: the unearthed “If You Ever Did Believe.” And with the Practical Magic sequel underway, Nicks wants to revisit it once more. 

“It’s funny, because ‘Crystal’ was recorded three times,” Nicks told me last year. “Maybe we should record it for a fourth time. I definitely think they should let me be a part of music. As soon as I get home, I’m going to make that phone call and say, ‘Listen, you have to let me do a song in this, and at least jump off the roof with you guys.’”

It’s unclear how much of “Crystal” is really about Buckingham; in the 2014 book Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams & Rumours, Zoë Howe writes that its lyrics were meant for Nicks’ father and grandfather. But it’s hard not to think about her relationship with Buckingham when listening to the song, particularly in lyrics like “And I have changed, oh, but you, you remain ageless” and “The love that had finally, finally found me.” 

Hearing “Crystal” now, these lines arrive like a punch to the heart, knowing what these two have gone through together since she wrote them. Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, and as Nicks told RS last year, the two have rarely spoken since then. Nicks won’t consider a proper farewell tour with Fleetwood Mac (especially after the 2022 death of her close friend Christine McVie), or any kind of show to play Buckingham Nicks material with Lindsey. Fleetwood Mac only performed “Crystal” in 1975 and 1976, and there’s no known record of Nicks ever performing it solo. This gives the “Crystal” even more mystery — no matter how many times it’s been recorded, it’s still the mythical deep cut waiting to be rediscovered. 

Many fans cling to that 1997 clip of “Silver Springs” that turned into a TikTok sensation in recent years. You know the one, where Nicks is staring daggers at Buckingham as she delivers line after line about how she’ll haunt him forever. But for those who really know these two musicians’ story, “Crystal” is the ultimate Stevie-Lindsey song — the one that represents their history throughout the decades while capturing why they first fell in love, before the darkness took over. It remains ageless.