“How Still My Love” is Track 7 on Bella Donna (1981), Stevie Nicks’ first solo album. It follows “Edge of Seventeen” and precedes “Leather and Lace” in the album track order.
About the Song
“‘Still of the Night’ was really probably one of my most romantic songs. I really wrote that about…I was feeling really romantic at the time. It’s my sexiest song. I love to sit and play it. It’s the vibe-iest song. It’s the one song I said had to be on the album, and it was the one that went in and out and in and out and off and on and off and on the album in the last four months, incredibly, until finally I knew that it would come around to people realizing it’s really such a neat song even if it’s for yourself to enjoy it” (Nicks, 1981).
“I really don’t write extremely sexual songs, never have. I’m always going to write about the bouquets and the flowers [laughs]. But ‘How Still My Love’ really is a sexy song, and being that it’s one of my few sexy songs, when we do it onstage it’s fun. It’s kind of woozy and it’s slow, but it’s got a really great beat — kind of a strip-tease, a little burlesque, a little Dita Von Teese-y.
“The title actually came from two different books I saw in some hotel, one was called How Still My Love and one was called In the Still of the Night, and I used both, but I never even opened up the books [laughs], so I have no idea what they were about. Whenever I come into a room with a library, in a hotel or whatever, I pull them all down and just sit — I get a lot of ideas that way” (Greenblatt, 2009).
Lyrics
Still the same old story
What price glory
You make it easy
In the still of the night
In the still of the night
How still my love
In the still of the night
How still my
Doing all you can for me
They say you’re not the man for me
Don’t make it easy
In the still of the night
In the still of the night
How still my love
In the still of the night
How still my love
Standing in the doorway
Watching out to sea
Calling out to me
You go your way
Go on go on
But you don’t forget me
Oh no you don’t forget me
Oh no my lonely one
You’re doing all you can for me
They say you’re not the man for me
Don’t I make it easy
In the still of the night
It’s me talking to you
How still my love
In the still of the night
How still my love
In the still of the night
It’s me that’s talkin’ to you
In the still of the night
(Stevie Nicks) © 1979 Welsh Witch Music (BMI) admin. by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Reference
Nicks, S. (1981). Breaking the chain
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Greenblatt, L. (2009). Stevie Nicks on her favorite songs: a music mix exclusive. Entertainment Weekly.
