Wednesday 20th May 2015 by Alexandra Pollard | Photos by Press, Splash, WENN Gigwise
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The 14 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs, ranked
From the very early days to the newly discovered demos
There aren't many bands who formed nearly half a century ago and are still headlining festivals today. There are even fewer whose music still sounds as fresh, unique and heartbreaking as Fleetwood Mac's.
From their early, all-male rock days before the arrival of Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham completely transformed their sound, Fleetwood Mac have been making the sort of music you want to dance and cry to at the same time.
Ahead of their UK dates, we have ranked the 14 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs. It wasn't easy sorting through decades worth of material, but these, in our humble opinion, are the 14 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs of all time.
14. 'Someone's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight': Probably the closest the band have ever come to sounding like Elvis, this is a bluesy, tongue-in-cheek ode to the youthful itch for aggression, from the band's early incarnation.
13. 'Planets Of The Universe': It's testament to the sheer brilliance of Rumours that this song, recorded as a demo during the making of that album, never made it any further. Thankfully, it was not only re-recorded in 2000 for Stevie Nicks' solo album, but its original demo version was also revealed a few years later. 13. 'Planets Of The Universe': It's testament to the sheer brilliance of Rumours that this song, recorded as a demo during the making of that album, never made it any further. Thankfully, it was not only re-recorded in 2000 for Stevie Nicks' solo album, but its original demo version was also revealed a few years later.
12. GYOW: The lyrics, which are somehow both liberating and stifling, document the frustrating contradiction of Lindsey Buckingham's relationship with Stevie Nicks - to an uncomfortably personal degree. Every time the lyric "shacking up is all you want to do" came up onstage, Nicks admits, "I wanted to go over and kill him. "
11. Angel: Inspired by the Welsh mythological folk story of Rhiannon - which Stevie Nicks only became aware of after writing the song of the same name. Despite its opaque literary backstory though, its lyrics are poignantly simple: "When you were good baby, you were very, very good. / I still look up when you walk in the room."
10. Over My Head': There's something beautifully soporific about this song's reverberating organ, which lurks modestly beneath Christine McVie's calmly defiant vocals. Though she's never confirmed it, the lyrics are said to refer to McVie's troubles marriage with the band's bassist John McVie - which ended a year after this song was recorded.
9. SYLM: Another of Christine McVie's biggest triumphs, 'Say You Love Me', with its punchy chorus and driving rhythm, helped the band's eponymous 1975 album to sell over 8 million copies worldwide.
8. Gypsy: The story that inspired this song is so moving it's probably best you just hear it in Stevie Nicks' words. "Before Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey [Buckingham] and I had no money, so we had a king-size mattress, but we just had it on the floor. Just that and a lamp on the floor, and that was it - there was a certain calmness about it. To this day, when I'm feeling cluttered, I will take my mattress off of my beautiful bed, wherever that may be, and put it outside my bedroom, with a table and a little lamp."
7. Oh Daddy: Christine McVie's lyrics have been rumoured to be about both Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham. It's not really important though - in many ways the song's subject comes a distant second to the narrator's crushing lack of self-worth, summed up in the opening lyrics, "Oh Daddy, You know you make me cry / How can you love me? I don't understand why."
6. Landslide: Stevie Nicks' affectingly raspy vocals sometimes struggle to scrape the bottom notes - and somehow that just adds to the song's effect. As if she sat down and made it up on the spot, with no thought of range. It boldly tackles ageing, regret and loss, and needs only a simple guitar melody to pin it together.
5. Rhiannon: Sung in barely more than a beautiful, croaky whisper by Stevie Nicks - until the soaring chorus comes in that is - the song was written in ten minutes by Nicks before she joined Fleetwood Mac. Inspired by a novel called Triad she bought in an airport, she regularly used to introduce it with, "This is a song about an old Welsh witch."
4. The Chain: We're not sure we can ever forgive Formula One for hijacking this song's riff with such zeal that it's become synonymous with the incredibly dull sport of auto racing. Nonetheless, it's an angry, anthemic tirade against a failing relationship - "Damn you love, damn your lies" - with one of the best bass riffs in music.
3. Songbird: Heartbreaking enough to stop you in your tracks, the song was famously covered by Eva Cassidy , but it's Christine McVie's original that really hits home the sense of unrecquited adoration: "I love you, I love you, I love you, like never before."
2. YMLF: This song revels in its own naive sense of optimism - its lyrics speak of a newly found belief in magic and miracles, but veiled beneath a heavy sense of precariousness.
1. Dreams: From the moment that opening drum riff gives way to the wobbly guitar, this song has you right in the palm of its hand. When Stevie Nicks' voice soars into the falsetto of "It's only right", it's like a stunning, tear-inducing punch in the heart.