Global Enchantment: How Stevie Nicks Became the World’s Favorite Apocalypse Soundtrack

PARIS—On a rain-slick Tuesday in Montmartre, a busker in a crushed-velvet cape is murdering “Rhiannon” on an out-of-tune accordion. The gendarmes yawn; the tourists film it for TikTok. Somewhere above us, orbiting satellites are still broadcasting Stevie Nicks’ 1975 vibrato to yurts in Mongolia, co-working pods in Lagos, and a Russian oligarch’s panic room in the Cotswolds. If you want a barometer for late-imperial decline, forget the Baltic dry index—just check how many stadiums from Santiago to Singapore are currently chanting witchy harmonies about Welsh ghosts and cocaine heartbreak.

Nicks, now 75, has become the patron saint of globalized melancholy, a one-woman IMF of feels. Her solo tours mint foreign currency like a platinum-plated mint: last month in Sydney, scalpers flipped tickets for the price of a Sydney harbor view apartment, while in Buenos Aires the peso was so traumatized it actually appreciated for six hours after the show. Central bankers won’t admit it, but the “Gold Dust Woman” outro solo is more stabilizing than any G7 communiqué.

The geopolitics of scarves should not be underestimated. Those diaphanous shawls—part Stevie, part Gandalf, part whatever the costume department found backstage—have become soft-power currency. When the U.S. State Department needed to distract from a drone strike last year, they sent an exhibition of her original chiffon to Riyadh. MBS posed with it on Instagram; oil futures dipped 2%. Meanwhile, fast-fashion factories in Dhaka now produce “Authentic Mystic Shawls” for $3.99, proving globalization can co-opt even your most personal hex.

Across Europe, Nicks’ aesthetic has fused with the continent’s perennial fascination with its own decay. In Lisbon, Gen-Z influencers smoke clove cigarettes in crumbling azulejo courtyards while lip-syncing “Edge of Seventeen,” a song older than most EU members. In Berlin, techno DJs drop witch-house remixes of “Dreams” at 3 a.m. while the crowd pretends austerity never happened. The continent that gave us two world wars now finds solace in a Californian sorceress cooing about crystal visions—because nothing says progress like outsourcing your existential dread to Laurel Canyon.

Asia’s relationship is more transactional. Seoul’s K-pop academies teach trainees to channel “Stevie energy” during high notes—equal parts vulnerability and occult menace—while in Tokyo salarymen queue for limited-edition Nicks-themed sake that tastes faintly of regret and benzodiazepines. China’s censors briefly banned “Sara” for its line about flying into someone’s face like a spirit, fearing airborne insurrection, but relented when a state-run think tank concluded the track could reduce urban burnout by 4.7%. Productivity up, dreams down—just another day in the People’s Republic.

Of course, every empire leaves casualties. The planet’s TikTok witches now cast binding spells over 15-second clips, reducing decades of occult feminism to a trending audio. In Lagos, Afro-witch house producers sample Nicks’ cackle without royalties; in London, posh boys named Hugo sell “Moon-Goddess” candles at £40 a pop. The supply chain is impeccable—crystals mined by underpaid Bolivians, packaged in Poland, blessed by a dropout in Topanga Canyon. Capitalism, like Fleetwood Mac, will never break the chain; it’ll just add a merch table.

Yet for all the commodification, the spell holds. When Russia invaded Ukraine, a Kyiv radio station looped “Landslide” for 48 straight hours; civilians reported feeling 12% less dead inside. Refugees in Warsaw hostels hum “Gypsy” while queuing for SIM cards. Somewhere in a Moldovan bunker, a teenage drone pilot writes her call sign on the fuselage: “Rhiannon.” The Pentagon classifies the morale bump as “non-lethal aid.”

In the end, Stevie Nicks is less a singer than a planetary coping mechanism—a velvet-lined algorithm for processing late-stage everything. She warned us the world would turn, and turn it has, grinding democracy, supply chains, and human attention spans into glitter. We keep spinning, slightly dizzy, scarves wrapped around whatever’s left of our necks. The accordion wheezes its final chord in Montmartre; the rain stops. A kid from Jakarta uploads the clip to YouTube with the caption: “when the goddess says goodbye.” The view counter resets to zero. Somewhere, a new moon is rising—probably over a parking lot.