Crystal Visions - The Very Best of Stevie Nicks (CD / DVD)

With a career that's seen her soar from struggling journeywoman to superstar via a fateful invitation to join Fleetwoood Mac, the singer who now bills herself as the most successful female artist in rock history looks back on the various facets of her iconography with this 16-track career retrospective and its accompanying DVD. The mystic-folkie ethos that has long been her caricature are well showcased via the cult fave Rumours outtake/B-side "Silver Spring," the muscular Sheryl Crow collaboration "Sorcerer," and a live version of the moody "Rhiannon" that casts it in even longer shadows. Yet Stevie Nicks has always displayed a willingness to push herself beyond her hippie muse, as witnessed by the dense aura of Deep Dish's remix of Mac's "Dreams" and such disparate, pop-savvy solo highlights as "I Can't Wait," "Stand Back," and shrewd, successful duets with Tom Petty ("Stop Draggin' My Heart Around") and Don Henley ("Leather and Lace"). Indeed, bookended by the original version of the hit "Edge of Seventeen" and a live revamping with the Melbourne Symphony that amps its every melodramatic nuance, reinvention often seems the anthology's subtext. The included DVD compiles 13 of Nicks's evocative videos with new commentary by her, as well as an insightful, previously unreleased home video shot during the Bella Donna sessions. --Jerry McCulley