HI! It’s been a minute.
I had some loose ideas on what to write, and even threw some Twitter polls up to eventually riff on, but then general mental exhaustion ground me to a literal halt. While I’m incredibly grateful for my material security and stability during all this shit, I wasn’t taking warning signs of burnout seriously. Pretending everything is peachy all the time isn’t a great regular mental health strategy, and it’s certainly not one to adopt now, during a pandemic. Take care of yourselves.
Anyway, I’m back and in a better headspace to write again (perhaps to your detriment), and I couldn’t think of a better way to return to your inbox than doing what I do best: talking about Rumours.
I hold more emotional space for Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 musical outing than I do for my own family. Created amid multiple breakups (and affairs) in the group, Rumours is a soft-rock exploration of love, lust, and contempt in a time of decadence for pretty much everyone involved. No one in the band was interacting unless they were specifically recording music and/or on cocaine, and yet, they created one of the most deservedly popular and cohesive albums of all time, despite the interpersonal cacophony.
Gushing aside, not every song is an easy listen for me. So, in honor of Valentine’s week, where we celebrate love, trust, honesty, fidelity… all of the stuff that Rumours is definitively not about, I figured I would opine a bit on how the songs stack up in my mind. Sit back, read, relax, and resist the urge to cheat on anybody (or run for president) while listening to this album.
11. “Don’t Stop”
HOT TAKE: “Don’t Stop” is not a good song. I’m sorry to inform you of this. While I generally enjoy guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and keyboardist Christine McVie singing together, this song does nothing for me. Yeah, sure, don’t look at the trail of destruction you’ve caused for your friends and loved ones on your incredibly selfish pleasure cruise. It is the “Live, Laugh, Love” of songs — vapid, meaningless, and removed from reality. Did I mention that I don’t like this song?
10. “Oh Daddy”
“Oh Daddy” is Christine McVie’s weird, dragging ode to drummer and band leader Mick Fleetwood — not in a sexual way, but allegedly due to his general good instincts on the band’s direction. There are better ballads that could have been part of this album (and we’ll get to that), yet “Oh Daddy” somehow made the cut. If you’re looking for a Christine McVie daddy-themed song, might I suggest “Sugar Daddy,” off the 1975 self-titled record.
9. “Never Going Back Again”
All of Lindsey Buckingham’s contributions to this album have Down Bad Energy. He wrote these songs as if he were an absolute goober that kept getting duped by every woman that crossed his path. I like to think he was a little more intelligent than that (and, looking at song 6 on this list, at least a bit more shrewd), though you couldn’t tell by this naive, folksy number about how, by golly, he’s not going to get fooled by a gal this time around.
8. “You Make Loving Fun”
This song seems too joyful to be on Rumours, until you remember that Christine McVie wrote this song about how much she preferred being with her boyfriend, a member of Fleetwood Mac’s crew, to her ex-husband, bassist John McVie (aka the “Mac” in Fleetwood Mac). I truly cannot imagine how much partying you have to do to lay down a breezy bass track to a song where your ex tells the world how sex is fun again now that she’s not having it with you.
7. “Second Hand News”
The song bangs until Lindsey Buckingham starts doing the “bow bow bow-bow” part of the song… which is most of it, unfortunately. It’s a really solid opening track, though, and sets your expectations for the rest of the album accordingly.
6. “I Don’t Want to Know”
It feels controversial to have this song ranked higher than some other heavy hitters, but it’s my newsletter, not yours. It doesn’t have the same name recognition or gravitas as some of the other songs on the album, but it’s fun, catchy, and annoys me less than “Second Hand News.”
Plus, it’s a fascinating song in the context of Rumours. Stevie Nicks wrote it in the early ‘70s for her and Buckingham’s folk duo — creatively named Buckingham Nicks — that the band recorded during the sessions without her to replace her slower (*cough* better *cough*) contribution to the record, “Silver Springs.” Perhaps conveniently, Lindsey Buckingham knew the leading melody well enough to get the track together, and Nicks’s harmonies were added after the rest of the band recorded, with her more or less kicking and screaming the whole time.
5. “Gold Dust Woman”
It’s not a Stevie Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac album if she doesn’t write a song about a mysterious, potentially terrifying witch. It also happens to be about Nicks’s cocaine addiction, but I digress. I do think there are better witch songs in the Fleetwood Mac catalogue, though — “Rhiannon” and “Sisters of the Moon” more easily come to mind, for me.
4. “Songbird”
Simple yet grand, Christine McVie’s “Songbird” is probably the only song on this album that isn’t tinged with an inherent spite. But, of course, in true Rumours style, nothing in this little love song is as it seems; the lyrics suggest that this love is actually unrequited. It’s a song of acceptance, with the subject of the song knowing that her love will only grow despite her love interest having moved far beyond her.
From my limited knowledge, I would argue that this song is not about the McVies, or anyone in the band for that matter, simply because the song is too nice. Still, it’s a really stunning song and moment of respite from the bitterness everywhere else.
3. “Go Your Own Way”
I’ve previously written about “Go Your Own Way,” and the song has grown on me. So much, in fact, that it’s my third favorite song on Rumours. Buckingham largely suggests that Stevie Nicks didn’t have the common courtesy to even kinda reciprocate his feelings throughout their turbulent relationship. At first glance, you might think it’s another Lindsey-sad-sack song, but by the second verse, he reveals a glimpse of how bitter he actually is — “packin’ up, shackin’ up’s all you wanna do” imbues a lot of meaning into a little phrase.
2. “Dreams”
The TikTok song that introduced Gen Z to Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams” is a contemplative exploration of a breakup (huh, wonder whose), where Stevie acknowledges the flaws in both parties. He wants independence and to carve a path for himself (uhhh, going his own way, if you will), while she simultaneously points out her own flaws in clinging to the relationship/his goals and ambitions, despite suggesting via lyric that he’s full of shit. After all, “players only love you when they’re playing.”
Something I’ve always loved about this song: Lindsey Buckingham “responds” as Stevie sings with some twangy guitar whines, as if to musically say “she’s totally overreacting.” Maybe I’m reading too much into that, but I’ve always interpreted it that way, and it makes the song even more interesting to me.
1a. “The Chain”
This song encapsulates everything about the Rumours era: lost love, thinly veiled contempt, and an underlying vein of distrust. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a song, bringing elements of old, rejected songs and musical choices from each band member together into something that feels soldered together in all the right ways. In many ways, it’s probably a metaphor for the band — something that should, practically speaking, never have worked, and yet it did, and still does.
It is the best song on the album, but it is not the best song of the Rumours sessions. That honor belongs to…
1. “Silver Springs”
…my favorite Fleetwood Mac song, the best thing they recorded around this time, and the best song that should have been on the album. As alluded to in my section on “I Don’t Want to Know,” “Silver Springs” got the axe because, allegedly, there were already too many slower numbers on the album, but, let’s be real, here. Nicks has never shied away from this song being directly about Buckingham, which led to some, uh, friction. It got relegated to the B-side of the “Go Your Own Way” single; the Buckingham track got a lot more recognition (and made the album), and frames the breakup far less in her favor. “Silver Springs” is a song that’s part longing, part stinging bitterness, and her side of the story that largely got buried for years.
Someday, I would love to do some game room film, so to speak, on this 1997 performance that shot “Silver Springs” back into relevance. Stevie Nicks sings the song incredibly pointedly at Lindsey Buckingham, and there are points where you can see the fear of God in Buckingham’s eyes while Nicks airs grievances you’d have thought were long dead. Twenty years after their breakup, she still felt the need to remind him that he’d “never get away from the sound” of the woman that loved him.
Thanks for reading along. If you enjoyed this, or (more likely) you’d like to bribe me to shut the fuck up about Fleetwood Mac, I will accept any such compensation on Venmo @tay_fult.