Music Critic Aurelia Loth guides us through Fleetwood Mac’s legendary discography
Fleetwood Mac are a legendary British American rock band reaching mainstream success in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Known for their tumultuous band dynamic, diverse songwriting skills, and unique blend of blues, pop, and rock sounds, the band is synonymous with a distinct Californian sound. The band went through many changes from its creation in 1967 with members both leaving and joining. Fleetwood Mac have an extensive catalogue of music spreading from the first album release in 1968 (Fleetwood Mac) to the most recent album in 2003 (Say You Will). Whilst the logical place to start may be the band’s first album, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham did not join the group until 1974, and it is after their integration that the bands success skyrocketed.
For this reason, this beginner’s guide to Fleetwood Mac begins with the release of Rumours in 1977. At the time of the albums release Fleetwood Mac was made up of five members – Mick Fleetwood (drummer), Christie McVie (keyboardist and vocalist), John McVie (bassist), Lindsey Buckingham (guitarist and vocalist), and Stevie Nicks (vocalist).
Rumours (1977)
Rumours is a ‘choose your own adventure’ story in audio form. Need to cry? Listen to McVie’s beautiful vocals in ‘Songbird’. Fancy something more uplifiting that you can groove to? Try Buckingham’s ‘Second Hand News’ or ‘Go Your Own Way’. Feeling the furies of feminist rage? Nicks’s ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is the perfect track. The album’s diverse sound is what makes it so unique, whatever you need you can find it amongst Rumours’ eleven tracks. This is by no means an alternative opinion as Rumours is widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time and was ranked number seven in Rolling Stone’s list of the top 500 albums ever.
“The album’s diverse sound is what makes it so unique, whatever you need you can find it amongst Rumours’ eleven tracks
Rumours was released in February of 1977 and sold 800,000 copies in its first week in the US alone. It went on to sell 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the biggest selling albums of all time. The album has eleven tracks each of which distinctly different from one another. Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, and Christie McVie each wrote and sang lead vocals making it feel more like a compilation of songs than a cohesive unified album. The album is a perfect introduction to Fleetwood Mac’s discography because it includes some of band’s biggest hits such as ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Dreams’ as well as providing a sneak peek into the personal drama happening behind the scenes during the production of the album.
Hit Singles
‘Dreams’
‘Now here you go again, you say, you want your freedom’
Written and sung by Stevie Nicks, ‘Dreams’ has a classic rock and folk sound and one of the three biggest hits from Rumours. ‘Dreams’ has become a cult classic with lyrics such as, ‘Thunder only happens when its raining / Players only love you when they’re playing’ and an infectious beat throughout, it is no wonder it was an immediate hit. Nicks claims to have written the song in a quick ten minutes whilst playing around with a drum pattern and her cassette player. The song is about navigating the complicated feelings in the lead up and aftermath of a breakup but is contrastingly set to a playful melody.
The song is now one of Fleetwood Mac’s most well-known tunes and is still played constantly on the radio almost fifty years after its initial release. ‘Dreams’ is easy listening with Buckingham and McVie’s background harmonies creating soft echoes alongside Mick Fleetwood’s steady drumming and Nick’s lead vocals. Whilst some may feel it has been overplayed I do think that ‘Dreams’ is worth returning to, if only to really listen to the lyrics and take in the sadness hidden beneath a playful melody.
‘Go Your Own Way’
‘Loving you isn’t the right thing to do’
The second hit single on the album is ‘Go Your Own Way’ which is written and sung by Lindsey Buckingham. Some context for new listeners to Fleetwood Mac, Nicks and Buckingham were in the midst of ending their eight year relationship during the recording of Rumours. If ‘Dreams’ is Nicks’s breakup song, then ‘Go Your Own Way’ is most definitely Buckingham’s breakup anthem. The pair had a rocky relationship and were reported to have had multiple screaming arguments in the recording studio but continued to work together, and luckily for our benefit, created some of the best breakup songs of all time. ‘Go Your Own Way’ was Fleetwood Mac’s first top-ten hit in the United States. Buckingham wrote the song in what he called ‘a stream of consciousness’ to understand his raw emotions in the wake of him and Nicks severing romantic ties with each other. The song is another of the band’s classic hits and holds a crucial spot as number five on the track list.
‘The Chain’
‘And if you don’t love me now / You will never love me again / I can still hear you sayin’ / You must never break the chain’
Now known for being the theme tune for the BBC’s Formula One coverage, ‘The Chain’ is highly recognisable due to its iconic bassline progression created by John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. The song was created by combining the solo works of other band members, the lyrics came from a song Nicks was working on, the chord progression from McVie’s previous work called ‘Keep me there’, and the intro came from one of Buckingham’s earlier works called ‘Lola (my love)’. It is the only song on the album that has all five band members in the writing credits and is consequently unique because of its collaborative creation. The song is split into two parts, the first is the opening verse and the chorus, and the second is its iconic outro played by bassist John McVie. The song is simply perfection, with the heartbeat like bassline gaining momentum and eventually exploding into one of the most iconic riffs in musical history making it a cornerstone of Rumours, and Fleetwood Mac’s discography as whole.
“The song is simply perfection, with the heartbeat like bassline gaining momentum and eventually exploding into one of the most iconic riffs in musical history…
Honourable mentions from Rumours
‘You Make Loving Fun’
‘Sweet wonderful you / You make me happy with the things you do’
Written by Christie McVie, ‘You Make Loving Fun’ is a song inspired by her love affair with the band’s lighting director Curry Grant. The song became a tour staple for the band and was played at every performance that included McVie from 1976 to 1997. The song became Fleetwood Mac’s fourth top-ten hit in the United States and remains as one of the most beloved songs from the album and the band’s discography more widely.
‘Gold Dust Woman’
‘Black Widow / Pale shadow, she’s a dragon / Gold dust woman’
‘Gold Dust Woman’ is a personal favourite of mine. Some listeners may remember it from the recent television show Daisy Jones and the Six which is a fictional re-telling of Fleetwood Mac’s rise to fame and the complicated relationship between its two lead singers (Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham or Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne in the television production). ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is powerful and full of rage, the song build momentum throughout with its feisty lyrics of ‘Well did she make you cry / Make you break down/ Shatter your illusions of love / Now tell me is it over now / Do you know how / To pick up the pieces and go home’. The song was originally supposed to have more of a folky sound but Nicks decided to go for something darker instead. Producer Ken Caillat said that Nicks wanted the song to grow and grow, making it feel like it has snuck up on you, and it is this building pressure that gives the song a creepy and rageful feel. ‘Gold Dust Woman’ has now been recognised as a foreshadowing of Nicks’s struggles with substance abuse and is a truly autobiographical tale of heartbreak and frustration. Personally, ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is the strongest song on the album and is one that I come back to frequently to revel time and time again in Nicks’s majestic vocal and emotive performance style.
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