Fleetwood Mac's 10 Greatest Songs

Let me start this blog by stating the already obvious: I am brazenly obsessed with music. That's something I get from my father. Back when he was a kid he took my grandparent's decrepit little record player and fixed it up. Each time he bought a record he would lay the 12" disc onto the platter, play a few words, pick up the needle (rest it) and write down the lyrics, then place the needle back down in the "same spot." Obviously it never went back down to the same exact spot; it was always a few seconds off. Just knowing that tedious process makes me appreciate growing up in the age of Spotify and Genius lyrics that much more but anyways, my pops built a collection of hundreds of records. Like you know the second scene in Straight Outta Compton where Dre. is laying in his room full of records? Yea... that was my dad.

That small digression may allow you to better understand why he was so fervid in playing me my first Fleetwood Mac song. Or album. Honestly both – we played the entire Rumours album start to finish on the way back from the cape when I was in 7th grade.

Regardless if you know them by name or not, if you have eyes and ears chances are you've heard at least one Fleetwood Mac song because ya know... they appeared everywhere. The Forrest Gump running montage ("Go Your Own Way). The beginning of the last fight scene in Guardians of the Galaxy ("The Chain). The internet-breaking Tik-Tok of a man casuaully sippin cranberry juice and skateboarding while listening to “Dreams.” And now most recently my news feed, as I read a report that Mick Fleetwood once calculated that collectively the members of the iconic rock band snorted 7 FUCKING MILES of coke. This report just so happened to glisten across my screen as "Gold Dust Woman" started playing on my phone. How ironic. Needless to say I was inspired to rank my top 10 favorite songs by Fleetwood Mac AKA one of the greatest and most goddam influential bands of all time. Here they are:

10. Gypsy

I swear to God listening to old Buckingham Nicks songs I’m convinced Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are the musical, nonfiction versions of Catherine and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. I mean deep love was apparent in both relationships. Both relationships turned toxic. And in both instances, the lovers (or ex-lovers should I say) are simply unable to resist the thought of each other. Don’t believe me? In 2013, Nicks told Rolling Stone “We write about each other, we have continually written about each other, and we’ll probably keep writing about each other until we’re dead,” when asked about Buckingham.

"Gypsy" secretly has a double meaning. On the surface, it refers to Stevie herself as she reflects on life pre-Fleetwood Mac, back when she and Lindsey Buckingham would sleep on a tiny mattress (no bed) in a tiny apartment room with nothing but a small table. Much deeper than that though, it is an emotional, sorrowful ballad written about her childhood friend Robin Anderson who had just passed away following an unexpected battle with cancer. Because she felt Robin’s widow, Kim Anderson was the only one who could truly empathize with the pain she was experiencing, the two married shortly after Robin’s death. Short-lived, the marriage was more of a way for the two to get through the grieving process together than true love. Regardless, you can truly see the seismic impact Anderson left on Nicks in this beautiful track.

9. Sara

“Sara” is another phenomenal song that once again has various meanings. The track is partially named after the baby Nicks was planning on having with Eagle’s legend Don Henley which she later aborted. It is also an expression of heartbreak and betrayal, as she reflects on her love affair with Mick Fleetwood which ended with him leaving her for Sara Recor – Nicks’ best friend at the time who he later married.

Following the release of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac needed a huge follow-up album and by all means, they delivered. The album cost over a Mili to produce and spanned two full LPs. Although Tusk can be compared to The Beatles’ White Album in that its wide range of tones makes the album come across as a collection of solo songs, it remains a complete and robust musical masterpiece filled with iconic Fleetwood Mac tunes. “Sara,” its most commercially successful track, peaked at Number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

8. Landslide

Surprisingly, one of Fleetwood Mack’s most notable songs was never originally released as a single. Written in Aspen Colorado and infused with decades of wisdom, Nicks reflects on life and love in “Landslide,” while gracefully using the metaphor of an avalanche to symbolize her fear that everything she’d built in life could be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

It’s crazy that she was only 27 when she penned such an introspective track – that was in 1973, a year before joining Fleetwood Mac. At the time, she and Buckingham were still relatively new to L.A., only living there for two years. Nicks worked at a bar and recalls the beauty in sharing the unknown with her lover. “It makes me remember how beautiful and frightening it all was… now what? Should we go back to San Francisco? Should we quit?’ We were scared kids in this big, huge, flat city where we had no friends and no money. But we didn’t quit.” Thank Jesus not because this song is nearly perfect.

Moreover, “Landslide” also addresses Nicks’ relationship with her business-executive father; the second verse is particularly biting: “Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?/ Can the child within my heart rise above?/ Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?/Can I handle the seasons of my life?” The introspection in such a simple quote is fucking baffling.

7. Everywhere

This is a song that just hits differently when you’re in love, take it from me. This impressionist masterpiece explores McVie’s experience with such an inexplainable feeling. It was the band’s first single to reach the Top 20 songs list in America and it’s not hard to see why. While many songs off Tango in the Night gave off feelings of suspicion and reservedness in regard to love, “Everywhere” apprehends it with feelings of empathy, happiness, and compassion. We all know the feeling of falling giddy into love, having our friends question why all of a sudden we are acting so differently. If you’ve never been in love… well it feels a little something like “I want to be with you everywhere.”

McVie’s extreme pop sensibility is showcased in this track which remains one of Fleetwood Mac’s most revered due to its straightforward lyrics and undeniably catchy hook. The ability of the band to flawlessly produce down-to-earth tracks like this as well as mystical masterpieces like “Gold Dust Woman” is part of what makes Fleetwood Mac so damn unique.

6. Second Hand News

The lead track of the album, “Second Hand News” evokes a false sense of happiness, captivating listeners with its upbeat rhythm and slightly corny yet effective chorus, then chewing up and spitting out their hearts with painfully relatable lyrics and an emotional guitar solo. It works perfectly for the album as it illustrates the intense feelings of love, hope, heartbreak, and acceptance that were poured into it. As the guitar slowly fades into silence all the made-believe feelings of happiness are lost to a world of emptiness and foregone dreams.

I can’t help it but every time I hear that “bow-bow-bow-doot-doo-diddley-doot” chorus, some part of my body starts moving uncontrollably. It’s worth mentioning that Mick Fleetwood made the beat by playing the back of an office chair. Now that’s ingenuity. I also find it pretty comical that the entire song is an ode to rebound chicks. Classy. That’s fucking Rock n Roll for you.

5. The Chain

For anyone looking to get into Fleetwood Mac, “The Chain” is certainly a classic to start with. The only song to ever feature all five band members, “The Chain” was assembled by compiling various individual tracks together, although the most distinguishable remains Christine McVie’s keyboard-backed “Keep Me There.” Ominous and ever so catchy, “the chain” is symbolic of the bond that renders relationships endless; the underlying link of love that kept the band together despite its obviously toxic and damaging relationships.

Tyler Bates really knew what he was doing in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 when the opening guitar notes of “The Chain” begin playing just as Chris Pratt gains the energy to fight back against the literal electric chain his father has trapped him in during the final fight scene in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. That’s some A-1 music choice.

4. Silver Springs

Man. This has got to be one of the prettiest songs I’ve ever heard Stevie Nicks sing (that’s saying something) and guess what? Her full-length version was CUT last second from Rumours for being “too long” ... I don’t blame her for going batshit crazy on Mick Fleetwood in the parking lot outside of their studio one bit. Flash forward one decade later and the raspy voiced, gypsy-like rock superstar Stevie Nicks quit the group – albeit temporarily – after being told she couldn’t use the track on her solo album.

The song was inspired by a road sign for Silver Spring, Maryland, and exudes the sentiment that ex-lovers will never truly be apart. Because the band continued touring together, Nicks was forced to hear of and witness her former lover’s new flings and relationships. The lines “Oh no, and can you tell me was it worth it?/Baby, I don’t want to know” get me every time. Nicks’ apparent fear for how Buckingham will respond to whether their relationship was worth all the heartbreak is itself immensely heartbreaking.

3. Go Your Own Way

Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” was the first single off Rumours and is the companion piece to Stevie Nicks’ “Dreams.” The story goes that during the earliest stages of the album – which is currently the 11th best-selling album of all time – at the height of the band’s turbulence and toxicity, they put a halt on touring and rented a place in Florida to live and record new music together. Mick Fleetwood wrote in his memoir of the “distinctly bad vibes” that permeated the house and it takes only 30 seconds of “Go Your Own Way” to get a sense of the brooding feelings of resentment the members had for each other at the time.

The chorus itself is upbeat, contrasted with bruising, anger-induced verses. Buckingham croons “shacking up’s all you wanna do” over a bombastic drumbeat and aggressive guitar sequence. Nicks adamantly denies any cheating on her part and insists Buckingham included the bitter lyric out of pure indignation. She’s spoken repeatedly about her deep struggles performing the song (which became their signature concert closer) live. Fucking ruthless Lindsey Buckingham.

2. Rhiannon

If you ever find yourself wondering why Stevie Nicks is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, just take one listen to “Rhiannon.” Nicks drew inspiration for the track from the novel Triad by Mary Bartlet, which tells the story of a woman whose spirit is possessed by another woman named Rhiannon. She later learned that in Welsh mythology, Rhiannon was a horse who was the goddess of fertility and began seamlessly assimilating the witch persona into her song and performances.

Every inch of this catchy ass song is filled with references to Celtic mythology. One of my favorites is the chorus itself. “All your life you’ve never seen a woman taken by the wind/Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?” As seen in most mythologies, if a god or goddess marries a mortal, they lose their superhuman abilities. Nicks is essentially asking how much her partner is willing to give up to be with her – Nicks and Buckingham penned this song sitting at the piano shortly after they began dating and just before being invited to join Mick Fleetwood and John McVie in the band. The line “will you ever win?” becomes rhetoric, stressing the power of the two’s love.

1. Dreams

In my opinion, "Dreams" is a top 10 song ever written and produced. Nick's response "Go Your Own Way" and "Second Hand News," the track takes a softer, more delicate approach to eating away an ex-lover's soul. Instead of publicly trashing Buckingham, Stevie Nicks instead reminds him off all the happiness and joy he felt throughout their relationship while asserting that he won't be able to recreate that feeling with anybody else and will one day regret taking advantage of her love.

Just listen to the vicious, omniscient tension that seeps through the opening lines. “Now here you go again/You say you want your freedom/Well, who am I to keep you down?” The song is quite morbid, obsessing over the desolate loneliness the singer's ex certainly faces. Disguised behind incredible, dynamic beats, it's impossible to miss the painstaking notions that were hurled Buckingham's way through Nick's sexual rasp.

I would write more about this song but honestly you just gotta listen to it yourself. You are welcome.