Released in December 1979 as the second single from Tusk, the song climbed to #7 in the U.S. Billboard chart. Such a loud success for a double album steeped in such personal revelations was partly unexpected: at the height of the band’s “moving family drama” mode, here was “Sara” — almost a chamber ballad, lacking even a visible music video.

Historically “Sara” fits into the era when rock musicians first spoke to their audience like equals: “put aside the doubts, it’s all going to hurt, but honestly.” The song was written even before Tusk found its shape: originally a poem born under ballet and Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre. Only afterward did Nicks come up with chords and turn it into the six-minute heart-rending story, which in the mixing process shrank from a sixteen-minute epic to a radio-format version.

“I heard ‘Sara’ live in 1980. She stood there like she was holding her own ghost. Everyone was silent — you could feel the ache in her voice. I’ve chased that feeling at a hundred concerts since and never found it again.”
— Robert, 63, Austin

Looking at Tusk from the outside, you could say that amid the album’s general madness, “Sara” was the anchor: the melody was simple and penetrating, the lyrics extremely straightforward, even when addressing an aborted pregnancy or love triangle. That’s why, in the frantic context of an era ending its euphoria, the song became the emotional anchor that grips even a 2025 listener.

Second, in the arrangement two pianos are deliberately used — so that in the left stereo channel you hear Nicks’s own piano part, and in the right you hear McVie’s warm keyboard work. That dual part feels like the echo of the song itself: one part conveys Nicks’s childlike melodic vocalizations, the other her mature harmonic hopes. Lindsey Buckingham’s guitars are woven around, but they don’t dominate: one electric Strat delivers refined string-like picking through a tube amplifier, the other adds a more muted accompaniment. As a result “Sara” acquires an atmosphere of boundless depth — you hear both the gentle murmur of acoustic strings and the distant ringing of electric textures, like an echo.

These elements tie stylistically into the emotions of the song. The “fluffy” attacking rhythm and layering of vocals create a feeling of despair which slowly fuels the soul-fire. That’s why critics praised “Sara” as a “lush, mesmerizing composition” with “smooth, captivating echo on the lead vocal,” noting that “Nicks’s voice seems to enchant, and the McVie–Fleetwood rhythm hypnotizes.” In simple terms: the song’s sound is a romantic melody locked inside a strict shell of complex multi-layered production arrangement. That combination of direct emotion (clear piano chords, a speaking voice) and studio techniques (two-channel panning, echo, dual guitars, etc.) gave “Sara” a rare sleepy magnitude. Considering that the final version runs nearly 6:22 (while originally it was more than 16 minutes!), it gives the listener time to absorb every nuance: from heartbeat to “words about home.”

Another metaphor: “Drownin’ in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown.” The image “sea of love” usually has a positive spin, but in Nicks’s version it is both ironic and disturbing: love becomes a quagmire in which one might drown. It’s as though a hint at depression after a breakup: many want to drown in love (to be consumed by it), but when “she” left, the reason no longer mattered. And yet the chorus-verdict “When you build your house, call me / When you build your house, then call me home” sounds like a promise of support despite everything. The word “house” here is less about concrete bricks and more about safety. Home for her is probably his heart or a friendly hand on the other end of the line. The main thing is hope that after the love catastrophe they’ll return to one another into well-fertilized silence.

“I played ‘Sara’ on repeat after my miscarriage. It was the only song that didn’t sound fake, that didn’t tell me to ‘stay strong.’ Just a woman being honest about loss. It gave me permission to feel everything.”
— Marlene, 47, Denver

Special attention should be paid to “great dark wing within the wings of a storm.” According to Fleetwood, that “dark wing” was an image referring specifically to himself. She felt in him both passion and protection: a strong but dark angel amid the storm of their affair. Ironically, the same text includes the name of another woman — Sara Recor, who became Fleetwood’s wife. Nicks tenderly narrates about a friend who believed the song “was entirely about her,” while Nicks herself later said “it was about all of us in that moment.” So the name “Sara” simultaneously stands for her abstract child and a real friend — as she later admitted, if she had had a daughter, “she would have been named Sara.” Meanwhile the line “there was a heartbeat and it never really died” directly hints at a lost child. Thus the track intertwines the whisper of friendship, the bitterness of disappointment, and the undignified truth of an unborn daughter.

Stevie Nicks doesn’t allow the story to blur into romantic haze: she sharply lays out the psychology of her protagonists. She is the grown woman who now says “you stopped warning me about danger.” In her voice you hear both resentment from friendship-betrayal, and pain from the loss of the future “Sara,” and an ironic acceptance: “Sara, you’re the poet in my heart, never change, never stop…” — a somewhat ironic blessing to a friend whose every naming acquires a metaphorical dimension of “everlasting art” of love. The tender-amber “Sara” in Nicks’s voice is like a narcotic — she “went crazy,” as she herself said of the track. There isn’t one iota of flattery here — only the bare truth of the heroine, both strong and vulnerable at once.

“Sara” adds its brush-stroke to the panorama of rock culture, even though direct “plagiarism” was rare. Still, Nicks’s example laid the groundwork for the aesthetics and emotions of many later female artists. One could say she passed the baton of an explicit lyrical song about pain and a woman enduring the collapse of relationships. The influence of Stevie and her mystical image is visible in indie rock and alternative today — think of Lana Del Rey, Maggie Rogers or even Taylor Swift: all are sensitive to the strings of the heart and know how to lay personal truth into song. Because Stevie with “Sara” set the bar: openness (including themes like abortion) and a gently ominous folkloric style that carried into the era of dream pop and alt-folk.
Even Fleetwood Mac continued to “play Sara” at every anniversary: the song entered many compilations and live albums. For example, on Greatest Hits it found its place next to “Dreams,” and decades later showed up on 50 Years – Don’t Stop. That eternity says that “Sara” survived the format change: it was on vinyl Tusk, on the CD remaster, and today sits in playlists across generations. Critics too treat it among best: British The Guardian placed “Sara” in the top-5 Fleetwood Mac songs, and American Paste ranked it 15th.

Interesting “side-effect”: Nicks herself became so immersed in this imagery that she used the name “Sara” in her own biography. In the 1980s, when she was battling addiction, she checked into a clinic under the pseudonym Sara — as though the song had become her alter-ego. And years later she again played with that motif in her own track “Welcome to the Room… Sara” (1987) — as if greeting that same inner “self” with a phone that “ceased to exist.” So “Sara” became the leitmotif of Nicks’s entire life path: from loud successes to the most personal trials. For true fans only; for others “Sara” remains a mystical rock ballad about human tragedies that never go out of fashion.

Of course there will be voices like “they don’t know her” and “you’re too sentimental” — as if “Sara” is just an old ’70s tearjerker, drawn-out and pompous. Some criticize the album Tusk for being “boring” compared with Rumours, and call “Sara” “just another Nicks song.” There’s the view that it’s “too long” or “too dramatic,” especially if you listen to the three-minute radio edit. But such criticism quickly loses weight once you dive in.

“Sara” isn’t a shout, but a test of the listener’s patience; if you listen carefully, every word and sound are in their place. Pop media critics called the radio version “claustrophobic,” but praised the original 6:22 for its depth. “Over-the-top” drama? Yes, you must admit the song is excessive — but that’s its charm: it unfolds gradually, like a strong magnetism. While thousands of “modern” hits are forgotten by the end of the first verse, “Sara” stretches every note to the limit, demanding immersion. The complaint of “too lullaby-ish” can be turned around: precisely in that soothing melancholy lies resistance to senseless chaos. Those who call it “over-hyped” simply didn’t give it a chance to become something greater for themselves.

So what do we have? A simple six-minute rock hit after half a century remains not just an old song, but a current onslaught of feelings. While most “meme” tracks burn out fast, “Sara” stays a warm spark: letting us understand that real grief and love won’t go out of fashion as quickly as gadgets change.
If skeptics tell you “this song is long and heavy,” remember: Sarah, call me (just dial the number) — and listen to it again.

Listen Further:

• Joni Mitchell – “A Case of You” (1971) — tenderness, irony, and pain in their purest form.
• Carole King – “It’s Too Late” (1971) — about a conscious breakup, no drama, just quiet sorrow.
• Kate Bush – “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” (1978) — ethereal and almost theatrical, like a vision.
• Alanis Morissette – “Uninvited” (1998) — darker, but with the same force of female self-awareness.
• Mazzy Star – “Fade Into You” (1993) — slow, dreamy melancholy, as if “Sara” had reincarnated into dream pop.
• Lana Del Rey – “Ride” (2012) — the heir to that same honesty and cinematic heartbreak.
• Phoebe Bridgers – “Motion Sickness” (2017) — Gen Z talking about the same wounds, but with a cynical smile.
• Maggie Rogers – “Light On” (2019) — bright but slightly anxious, as if Nicks herself had returned in the digital age.