Stevie Nicks released Rock a Little on November 18, 1985, through Modern Records. Her third solo studio album followed Bella Donna and The Wild Heart, with synthesizers and programmed percussion taking a prominent place alongside the guitars. Its two biggest singles, “I Can’t Wait” and “Talk to Me,” also captured very different experiences of getting a vocal onto tape.
“I Can’t Wait” started with a track Rick Nowels brought to Nicks, hoping she would write a song over it. In her 1991 liner notes for Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, she recalled keeping her excitement to herself until he left, then going straight to her own recording space and working through the night. When they recorded the song in a larger studio, she sang it once and kept that performance. “Some vocals are magic and simply not able to beat,” she wrote. Nowels and Jimmy Iovine co-produced the finished track.
“Talk to Me” took more persuasion. Written by Chas Sandford, who co-produced it with Iovine, the song became the album’s lead single. Nicks explained in the liner notes to her 2007 collection Crystal Visions… The Very Best of Stevie Nicks that Iovine had brought it to her. She hadn’t liked it initially, while he believed it could become a major hit. Even after she committed to recording it, finding the right vocal remained difficult.
Drummer Jim Keltner helped her get there. In that same account, Nicks recalled telling him she was struggling with the song while he was working in a neighboring studio. Keltner offered to listen as her audience, giving her someone to sing to. “His encouragement and presence made all the difference in the world,” she said. Two passes were enough to capture the vocal. For a record with so much happening in its arrangements, that breakthrough came from a simple change in the room.
Nicks’ own writing supplied another side of the album. She wrote “Rock a Little (Go Ahead Lily),” “I Sing for the Things” and “No Spoken Word” herself, while the closing piano ballad, “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You,” carried a co-writing credit with Keith Olsen. In her Timespace notes, she explained that the song was written for Joe Walsh after he told her about the death of his young daughter and took her to a park where they had spent time together. The visit changed how she understood his grief, and she responded by writing him a song. The album ends with that personal exchange.
There was more music attached to the singles, too. “Talk to Me” arrived with “One More Big Time Rock and Roll Star” on its B-side, putting another song outside the album’s 11-song sequence. That recording later appeared in her 1998 box set The Enchanted Works of Stevie Nicks.
Rock a Little peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard 200. “Talk to Me” reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, followed by “I Can’t Wait” at No. 16. The vocal Nicks had struggled to finish also earned recognition at the 1987 Grammy Awards, where “Talk to Me” was nominated for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female.
