23/10/23 Song Analysis Assignment
Gold Dust Woman – Fleetwood Mac (1977)
Performance
Gold Dust Woman is a track from the 1977 album Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Rumours was the eleventh album released by Fleetwood Mac and started development in February 1976, ultimately being released February 4th, 1977. It is the eleventh and final track on the original version of the album. The original recording of Gold Dust Woman contained vocals, guitars, bass guitar, drums, piano, cowbell, an electronic harpsichord and other sound effects such as a jet phaser. Gold Dust Woman consisted of Stevie Nicks who wrote and performed lead vocals for the song, Christine McVie who provided backing vocals and piano accompaniment using a Fender Rhodes piano, John McVie on bass guitar, Linsday Buckingham who also performed backing vocals and was the guitarist and Mick Fleetwood taking on many different roles such as drums, the electronic harpsichord, the cowbell and other various sound effects such as breaking glass for the background of the track.Despite the deep lyrics, the overall energy of this song is quite chill with the occasional increase yet nothing too unfitting or energetic. Out of one hundred I would give it sixty energy-wise. It was recorded live as it was 1976 and was reported to be finally recorded near 4am after the band had done a day full of takes, trying to get it perfect. The way Stevie Nicks sings the song creates an almost haunted sound and I am of the opinion that her unique sounding voice transformed the track into a song of upbeat desperation, of attempting to get through it even those there’s a hint of tiredness to her voice. It’s a fairly fast song and it feels filled with bitterness as if the singer is lacking in empathy for the subjects of the song, yet it’s still clearly emotion-filled.
Technology
The song itself was recorded in the recording studio Record Plant. Record plant is based in Sausalito, California and known for producing many popular albums such as Bruce Springsteen's ‘Born To Run’ and The Eagles ‘Hotel California’. The track ‘Gold Dust Woman’ was recorded in 1976 with just it’s perfected live recordings with a 23-track tape machine created by the company 3M. The album itself called ‘Rumours’ was produced by the band, Fleetwood Mac and two talented men named Ken Caillet and Richard Dashut. Additionally, Caillet also put his own job duties on hold and, as the more technically adapt of the lot, took over the role of engineering also. For all the recording they had an API mixing console with 550A equalisers which were used to control the frequency differences and the tracks ‘timbre’ (the perceived tone quality). Due to the track's year of release, the song does not contain any digital sampling or quantisation as that only started really being used in the mid to late eighties.
Music Theory
Tempo wise, Gold Dust Woman is played at a speed of 123BPM which is in the category fast which in music terms, is also known as allegro. The song is played in the key G Major and in the time signature 4/4 which is also known as the ‘common time’. The key G Major includes G, A, B, C, D, E and F# so its key signature only has one sharp. In terms of complexity, Gold Dust Woman is slightly more complex and detailed than the average song. The guitars in this song are tuned to drop D and uses the chords G, D, C and Bb.
Song structure:
Intro riff:
E | ---x---x-------- |
B | ---3---3--3-3/5- |
G | ---2---2--2-2/4- |
D | ---0---0-------- |
A | ---------------- |
D |-0---0---0------ |
X2
Verse 1:
Start with an upstroked D
[D///] [G///] [C///] [G///] [D] [Intro Riff]
[D///] [G///] [C///] [G///] [D] [Intro Riff]
[D///] [G///] [C///] [G///] [D] [Intro Riff]
[D///] [G///] [C///] [G///] [D] [Intro Riff]
Chorus:
[Bb///] [G///] [C///] [D///]
[Bb///] [G///] [C///] [D///] [Intro Riff]
Verse:
[D///] [G///] [C///] [G///] [D] [Intro Riff]
[D///] [G///] [C///] [G///] [D] [Intro Riff]
Chorus:
[Bb///] [G///] [C///] [D///]
[Bb///] [G///] [C///] [D///] [Intro Riff]
X2
Musical Context
While originally intended to be a folk song, as takes progressed and the band rehearsed, it slowly became more of a creepy, almost haunting song. It was also originally inspired by free jazz and I think you can still hear hints of a slightly jazzy melody in the final take. As Stevie Nicks has stated in interviews, the song is mainly about her “kind of symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship, doing a lot of drugs, and trying to make it. Trying to live. Trying to get through it.” It’s clear to me the title ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is an allegory for cocaine as it’s well-known that the band were taking it at this time. I think this song is perhaps Nicks’ song for herself, showing what she’s going through. The lyric ‘Take your silver spoon, dig your grave’ implies that the person in this song has a silver spoon, which is another way of saying she is very fortunate and wealthy. As this song talks about drugs, Nicks could be stating that the woman will dig her own grave with her silver spoon and her intense spending for drugs will catch up to her. The song was fully written by the lead singer Stevie Nicks and is often regarded as her signature song by many fans. The band’s guitarist, Lindsay Buckingham, has stated before that his biggest inspirations were Elvis Presley and The Kingston Trio however, I do think Gold Dust Woman took its own path without influence and advanced to become the unique song it was through practice and different attempts.
Lyrics
As for the lyrics of the song, there’s no ‘perfect’ rhymes per say, however, I do believe there are some family rhymes throughout the text such as 'home' in the chorus and 'how' and 'shadow' in the verses. Despite the general lack of clear rhymes at the end of the lines, there is quite a bit of internal rhyming. Some great examples of this are ‘Pick your path and I’ll pray’ which could be considered another family rhyme. Another wonderful example is ‘And is it over now, do you know how?’ which is an internal perfect rhyme. There is also plenty of alliteration in this track which makes the lyrics blend together better such as ‘lousy lovers’ and ‘silver spoon’, alliteration is a wonderful technique to use in songs as it gives the effect of a smoother and more lyrical sound. There is a slight formality to the structure of these lyrics which I believe makes the track vernacular as I don’t think the language used would be used that way in everyday sentences. This is a very stylized song where Stevie Nicks manages to sing all of her lyrics instead of speaking them. This would be a difficult song to cover and get the same effect as Nicks did due to her haunting, slightly raspy voice.