I’m spiraling through time this morning, though I’m neither stuck in Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” nor at the wheel of my flux capacitor-equipped Mazda3. Rather, my headphones are plugged into the computer and Abigail Rose’s “The Wild Heart” is sashaying through my imagination. It’s pulling me to the June 1983 afternoon when, between a morning rehearsal for my high school graduation and that night’s Senior Awards shindig, I ambled into the Hatboro Music Shop and splurged on the new Stevie Nicks LP, The Wild Heart.
The song is a cover of that album’s title track, in other words. Abigail Rose—one of my favorite up-and-coming artists—explained in an Instagram post that a YouTube clip of the witchy singer-songwriter performing the song at a 1981 photo shoot cast a spell on her; she watched it again and again, and again after that, and then decided she needed to pay homage to the song and record it herself.
That photo-shoot rendition is a distinct beast than what eventually surfaced on The Wild Heart, a six-minute wonder that evolves from a tender tune into a whirling dervish. The biggest difference: It’s Nicks singing to a backing track that became the basis of “Can’t Go Back,” written by Lindsey Buckingham for the Mirage album. While she kept elements of the melody, she added enough differences to take the sole songwriting credit.
Not that any of that matters here, really. Abigail Rose kicks the song into high gear from the start and never lets up. It’s a frenetic and fun kiss-off to a lover, and the kind of single that should come with a warning label slapped across its virtual picture sleeve: To avoid speeding tickets, don’t listen and drive! ‘Cause, trust me, that thumpa-thumpa beat is sure to make one push the pedal to the metal….
The Old Grey Cat 