Taylor Swift gave a sweet tribute to pal Stevie Nicks mid-performance at her Eras Tour.
“I’ve never played this song live at all and the reason I want to play this tonight is because a friend of mine is here, who is watching the show and has really been one of the reasons why I or any female artist gets to do what we do,” Swift, 34, told the crowd at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on Sunday, June 30. “She paved the way for us.”
The pop star continued praising Nicks, 76, who was spotted inside the VIP tent with Julia Roberts, Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his pal Ross Travis.
“She’s become friends with so many female artists just to be a guiding hand. I can’t tell you how rare that is,” Swift said. “She’s a hero of mine and also someone I could tell her any secret [and] she’d never tell anybody. She’s really helped me through so much over the years. I’m talking about Stevie Nicks.”
After concluding her shout-out, Swift proceeded to sing a mash-up of The Tortured Poets Department’s “Clara Bow” — where she sings about Nicks — and “The Lucky One,” off her Red album.
“You look like Stevie Nicks / In ’75, the hair and lips / Crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshine, a full eclipse,” the TTPD track’s lyrics read.
Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks Getty Images
While Swift name-dropped the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman in the TTPD song, Nicks also penned the opening prologue poem for Swift’s 11th studio album, which was released in April. Inside the vinyl or CD copy was Nicks’ handwritten message, which read, “For T and me …”
“He was in love with her / Or at least she thought so / She was brokenhearted / Maybe he was too,” the poem reads. “Neither of them knew / She was way too hot to handle / He was way too high to try / He couldn’t even see her.”
Nicks called the relationship “almost a tragedy.” She wrote: “He really can’t answer her / He’s afraid of her / He’s hiding from her / And he knows that he’s hurting her.”
Swift and Nicks’ friendship dates back to 2010 when the duo performed Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” and Swift’s “You Belong With Me” at the Grammy Awards. Later that year, Nicks gushed about Swift in a TIME profile.
“Taylor reminds me of myself in her determination and her childlike nature. It’s an innocence that’s so special and so rare,” Nicks wrote at the time. “Taylor can do ballads that could be considered pop or rock and then switch back into country. When I turned 20 years old, I had just made the serious decision to never be a dental assistant. Taylor just turned 20, and she’s won four Grammys.”