Taylor Swift dedicated the live debut of her new song “Clara Bow” to Stevie Nicks on Sunday during the third and final date of her Eras Tour at Dublin, Ireland’s Aviva Stadium.
The contemplative track, which appears on Swift’s latest album The Tortured Poets Department, pays tribute to the Fleetwood Mac singer with the lyrics: “You look like Stevie Nicks / In ’75, the hair and lips / Crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshine, a full eclipse.”
Swift shared praise for Nicks before playing “Clara Bow” on acoustic guitar as the first of two surprise songs during her set. “The reason I want to play this tonight is because a friend of mine is here,” she said to rapturous applause. “A friend of mine is here who is watching the show, who has really been one of the reasons why I or any female artist gets to do what we get to do now. She’s paved the way for us, and she’s mentored so many artists that you don’t even know she’s doing it. She’s just become friends with so many female artists, just to be a guiding hand. I can’t tell you how rare that is. She’s a hero of mine and also someone that I can tell her any secret — she’d never tell anybody. She’s really helped me through so much over the years. I’m talking about Stevie Nicks. So I’m going to play ‘Clara Bow’ for the first time for her.”
READ MORE: Top 10 Stevie Nicks Songs
How Taylor Swift Helped Stevie Nicks Grieve
Swift followed up “Clara Bow” with a piano rendition of “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” off 2022’s Midnights. Nicks, who was in the audience, could be seen wiping tears from her eyes during the performance. The singer previously credited the song with helping her grieve the loss of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie.
“Thank you to Taylor Swift for doing this thing for me, and that is writing a song called ‘You’re on Your Own, Kid,'” Nicks said during a concert in 2023. “That is the sadness of how I feel. As long as Chris was, even on the other side of the world, we didn’t have to talk on the phone. We really weren’t phone buddies. Then we would go back to Fleetwood Mac, and we would walk in and it would just be like, ‘Little sister, how are you?’ It was like never a minute had passed, never an argument in our entire 47 years.
“So, when it was the two of us, the two of us were on our own, kids, we always were. And now, I’m having to learn to be on my own, kid, by myself. So, you [the audience] help me to do that. Thank you.”