Stand Back

"Stand Back" is a song by Stevie Nicks from her 1983 album The Wild Heart. It was released as the first single for the album on May 19, 1983, and went to number five on the U.S. and number two on the U.S. Top Rock Tracks chart in August of that year. The song still receives substantial airplay to this day.

Origin of the song
Nicks has often told the story of how she wrote the song. She wrote it shortly after she was married to Kim Anderson. The newlyweds were driving up to San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara when Prince's song "Little Red Corvette" came on the radio. Nicks started humming along to the melody, especially inspired by the lush synthesizers of the song, and "Stand Back" was born. They stopped and got a tape recorder and she recorded the demo in the honeymoon suite that night. Later, when Nicks went into the studio to record the song, she called Prince and told him the story of how she wrote the song to his melody. He came to the studio that night and played synthesizers on it, although his contribution is uncredited on the album. Then, she says, "he just got up and left as if the whole thing happened in a dream." Prince is occasionally listed as the song's co-writer, especially on mainland European releases.

Music video
There are two versions of the video.

The first, which was never aired and is referred to as the "Scarlett Version", was directed by Brian Grant and features Nicks in a very expensive re-creation of aspects of Gone With the Wind. Stevie herself nixed the video—according to Grant, she felt she looked fat. This version can now be found (with Nicks commentary) on the DVD supplement of her 2007 collection Crystal Visions -- The Very Best of Stevie Nicks.

The second, or 'official', version was directed by choreographer Jeffery Hornaday and shows Nicks performing the song in front of a microphone in a dimly lit room surrounded by walls and mirrors made of glass. The emphasis in this version is dance, and interspersed throughout are choreographed sequences of dancers (in a subtle homage to the 1980 film Frame) who join Nicks on the soundstage toward the end.