Songoftheday 8/25/16 - Somewhere out in the back of your mind, comes your real life and the life that you know...

"Rooms On Fire" - Stevie Nicks
from the album The Other Side Of The Mirror (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7

Today's song of the day is by Stevie Nicks, who was last seen taking her third solo album turn in 1985, with the Top-5 pop hit "Talk To Me" and top-20 follow-up "I Can't Wait". A third single, the beautiful "Has Anybody Ever Written Anything For You?", missed the pop top-40 at #60, but reached a respectable #31 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart. Returning to Fleetwood Mac for their 1987 album Tango In The Night, it would be four years before her next solo release, The Other Side Of The Mirror. Produced by Rupert Hine (The Fixx, Howard Jones), the album didn't stray into new wave territory like the mention of Hine would suggest; rather he gravitated more to her style, and with a romantic relationship brewing between them, Stevie wrote what would become the first single, "Rooms On Fire" with Rick Nowels. Inspired by their ill-timed romance, the song became her final top-40 solo pop hit...

"Rooms On Fire" reached the top-20 on the American pop chart in July of 1989. The song also became her second #1 Mainstream Rock radio hit (after "Talk To Me"), while crossing over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart at #16. Internationally, the single peaked at #9 in Canada, made the top-20 in the UK (#16), Ireland (#17), New Zealand (#12), and the Netherlands (#20).

While the album track "Long Way To Go" climbed to #11 on the Mainstream Rock chart (and was a minor hit in Britain and Germany and #60), the American pop follow-up "Two Kinds Of Love" stiffed altogether. Another single, "Whole Lotta Trouble", made it to #22 in Ireland, #62 in the UK, and got her nominated for a Grammy for Female Rock Vocal in 1991.

After returning to the Mac yet again for one more album, Behind The Mask, without compadre Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie took off yet again, and with 1991's Timespace retrospective, she went back to the rock radio top 10 with "Sometimes It's A Bitch" (#7).  In 1994, after another stint in rehab, the scattered Street Angel album was released, with "Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind" reaching the top-40 on the American Rock (#36) and Adult Contemporary (#17) lists as well as in Canada (#13), but it sputtered out at #57 on the pop Hot 100.

Stevie and Lindsey resolved their differences a couple years forward, and with the entire Fleetwood Mac "classic lineup" reunited for the heralded The Dance tour and album, Nicks found herself back in the public spotlight in a big way. After a box set, Nicks released the top-5 album Trouble In Shangri-La in 2001, with two top-40 adult contemporary hits including the #17 "Every Day", while the track "Planets Of The Universe" was transformed into a club anthem and went to #1 on Billboard's Dance chart. Ten years later she re-emerged with In Your Dreams (with the Eurythmics David Stewart producing). She sported a pair of adult contemporary hits, with "Secret Love" reaching #20 and "For What It's Worth" going to #25. Most recently, Stevie made a cameo on American Horror Story: Coven (natch) and her album 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault in 2014 became her sixth top-10 album in America.

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Here's Stevie performing the song live in concert for a TV appearance in Europe...

...and a live recording from 1994...

Lastly, here's a remix of the track done by Matt Pop...

Up tomorrow: Women rockers request some company.