16 Famous Musicians Who Dated Or Married Their Band Members, And Which Songs Came Out Of Their Relationship
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A lot of bands on the Billboard charts write songs about the people they've been in relationships with. Sometimes the subjects of those songs are also in the band.
Big Machine Records / Via giphy.com
And even if they didn't write any songs about each other, they wrote and recorded songs with each other.
Here are 16 pairs of famous musicians who dated or married their band members:
1.Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were already a couple when they both joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, but they broke up shortly before releasing Rumours in 1977.
Prior to joining Fleetwood Mac, they were in two other bands together — Fritz and Buckingham Nicks.
They both left the band a few years later but returned. They continued to work together until Lindsey was officially kicked out in 2018.
Songs about their relationship: "Dreams" and "Go Your Own Way"
2.In 1977, Mick Fleetwood, who was then married to Jenny Boyd for the second time, had an affair with his Fleetwood Mac bandmate Stevie Nicks.
Mick and Jenny's first marriage lasted from 1970 to 1976, during which she allegedly had an affair with member Bob Weston, whom Mick promptly kicked out of the band. Their second marriage lasted from 1977 to 1978.
During her affair with Mick, Stevie was dating Don Henley.
After his second divorce from Jenny, Mick was married to Sara Recor, Stevie's close friend, from 1988 to 1992.
Songs about their relationship: "Sara," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Storms."
3.Christine Perfect joined Fleetwood Mac a few years after marrying member John McVie in 1968, and she kept his name when they divorced in 1976.
She also dated the band's lighting director, Curry Grant, in 1976. Two years later, John married Julie Ann Reubens. Christine left the band in 1998 but came back in 2014.
Song about their relationship: “Don’t Stop.”
4.Lisa Coleman joined the Revolution, Prince's backing band, in 1980, started dating her childhood friend Wendy Melvoin in 1981 and helped her girlfriend join the band in 1983.
Lisa told Out, "Once she was finally hired into Prince's band, it was like a dream for me ... Providence moved in such a way that Wendy ended up on the road with us."
After leaving the Revolution in 1986, they continued to make music together as Wendy & Lisa. Even after breaking up in 2002, they continued to collaborate.
Songs from their relationship: Their debut album, Wendy and Lisa, contained the singles "Waterfall" and "Honeymoon Express."
5.While performing at a party with the Miami Latin Boys, Emilio Estefan Jr. met his future wife, Gloria Fajardo, and after they ran into each other at a wedding later that summer, he invited her to join his group, which became Miami Sound Machine.
He was her first boyfriend. They got married in 1978 and have two children together.
Songs about their relationship: The soundtrack of On Your Feet, a musical about the Estefans' lives.
6.Emma Watkins (the Yellow Wiggle) and Lachlan Gillespie (the Purple Wiggle) toured together with the Wiggles for seven years before getting married in 2016, but they divorced in 2018.
Emma's mother, Kathryn, told the Australian Women's Weekly, "Emma didn't even notice Lachy liked her so much. And then, when she did find out, being children's entertainers, they had to be very careful."
In a joint statement concerning their divorce, Emma and Lachlan said, "Our incredible friendship has been strengthened throughout this time and what we have discovered is that, more than ever, first and foremost we love and adore performing as Emma and Lachy in the Wiggles and having the privilege of celebrating this happiness with extraordinary families around the world."
Song from their relationship: "Welcome to the Emma and Lachy Show."
7.In 2016, Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan, aka the pop duo Karmin, had a wedding scheduled, but their label executives didn't "feel confident pushing [their] music" if they were a married couple, so they had a "confidential" ceremony instead.
The couple purchased their first house together and got married in the backyard.
Amy told Cosmopolitan, "It was an intense experience, but Nick and I are still together."
A year later, they decided to end Karmin, and Amy rebranded as Qveen Herby. Nick is still by her side as her husband and producer.
She also said, "It's just as exciting to him if not more than holding a microphone and doing choreography. He was not really as excited about those elements, and it was usually me reaching out to the fans anyway. I'm really lucky to have him. I definitely would not be able to afford to put out this much music with somebody that wasn't as committed!"
Song about their relationship: "Tidal Wave."
8.Sonic Youth bandmates Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore got married in 1984, but after he had an affair with Eva Prinz, both the couple and the band split in 2011.
They went on one final tour together in South America post-separation.
In her memoir, Girl in a Band, Kim wrote, "During rehearsal and all that week, I remember Thurston making a point of telling the band he didn’t want to perform this or that Sonic Youth song. It eventually hit me that certain songs he wanted to leave out were about her."
Their divorce was finalized in 2013.
Song (potentially) about their relationship: "Paprika Pony" by Kim Gordon.
9.In the early '90s, Wyclef Jean began dating both his Fugees bandmate Lauryn Hill and his future wife, Claudinette, around the same time, and in his autobiography, he alleged that Lauryn, his continued affair partner, "led him to believe" she was pregnant with his child after he got married.
However, Rohan Marley, Lauryn's partner at the time of her pregnancy, told Fuse that Jean knew the baby was Marley's and only told that story in his book as a "moneymaking ploy."
The band broke up in 1997.
Song about their relationship: "The Score."
10.In 1984, Patti Scialfa joined Bruce Springsteen's backing band, the E Street Band, and after he married Julianne Phillips in 1985, then divorced her in 1988, Bruce and Patti became a couple that's still going strong.
They got married in 1991 and have continued to perform together.
Songs about their relationship: The entire Western Stars album.
11.Even though they got married in 1998 and divorced in 2000, White Stripes members Meg White and Jack Gillis claimed to be siblings until their marriage certificate was dug up in 2001.
They'd continued with the band post-split at Meg's insistence, creating an elaborate backstory to sell the ruse. They officially disbanded in 2011 and haven't spoken to each other since.
Songs about their relationship: Potentially none. In 2012, Jack told the AV Club, "I think it’s very funny that people nowadays still think if you use the word ‘I’ or ‘she,’ you are talking about yourself or your girlfriend at the time! I mean, what year is it? Didn’t they get rid of that prison in the ’60s? If I say, ‘I want to kill that man that came to my door’ in a song today, by that logic, a detective should be calling my house.”
12.Win Butler and Régine Chassagne met in Montreal in 2000 when he was looking for a drummer, got married in 2003, and released their debut album with Arcade Fire in 2004.
They had their first child in 2013.
Song from their relationship: "Headlights Look Like Diamonds" was the first song they ever wrote together.
13.Gwen Stefani started dating Tony Kanal shortly after she joined No Doubt in 1989, but he broke up with her in 1994.
However, the group continued to tour together, and Gwen credited the breakup with sparking her creative awakening because she started writing songs afterward. In 2002, she married Gavin Rossdale and mended her friendship with Tony.
Songs about their relationship: "Don't Speak" and "Cool."
14.Tina Weymouth was dating someone else when she met Chris Frantz in 1971, but a year later, she started dating Chris and joined his band — which would become the Talking Heads — soon after.
They got married in 1977.
Songs from their relationship: “Psycho Killer” was the first song they wrote together.
15.In 1971, Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus got married two years after meeting in a café, and in 1974, they won Eurovision as members of ABBA.
However, they divorced in 1980, and within a week, he was in a new relationship.
In her autobiography, As I Am, Agnetha wrote, "We always told the media that it was a ‘happy’ divorce, which of course was a front … obviously we all know there are no such things as happy divorces, especially when there are children involved.”
Songs about their relationship: "The Winner Takes It All" (Björn denies the song is autobiographical, but Agnetha claims it is) and "Knowing Me Knowing You."
16.And finally, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, the other half of ABBA, had been together since 1968, but they didn't tie the knot until 1978.
However, they also divorced a year after Agnetha and Björn's separation. The band split up the following year, but they reunited in 2018.
Song about their relationship: "The Winner Takes It All" (Agnetha said that the song is "a mixture of what [she] felt and what Björn felt but also what Benny and Frida went through”).
