On Dec. 31, 1974 — 40 years ago today — guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks, who performed together at the time under the name Buckingham Nicks, joined British blues rock band Fleetwood Mac. Though the band had found great success in the British blues scene of the late 1960s and early '70s, the inclusion of Buckingham and Nicks to the line-up transformed Fleetwood Mac into the biggest pop band in the world. To celebrate this anniversary, here are the 10 best Fleetwood Mac songs written by Buckingham or Nicks, in alphabetical order.
1. "The Chain"
"The Chain" was the only Fleetwood Mac song to have been written by all five members of the Buckingham/Nicks-era band, but based on how incredible the song is, they should have collaborated more often. It is a perfect amalgam of everything that made this band great: Lindsey Buckingham's intricate guitar playing, Stevie Nicks's ethereal songwriting, Christine McVie's pop sensibilities and the impenetrable groove of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.
2. "Dreams"
Stevie Nicks is an absolute genius of simplicity in songwriting, and no other Fleetwood Mac song demonstrates this better than "Dreams," the band's only No. 1 song in the U.S. The song comprises just two chords over and over for four minutes, but the way in which Nicks strings her melodies together makes each section of the song sound distinct.
3. "Gold Dust Woman"
How could you categorize “Gold Dust Woman”? It is a little bit folk, a little bit country and even a little bit gothic, as if Nico decided to start writing pop songs instead of musical nightmares. It is a sort of psychedelic/country hybrid that nobody — give or take Gram Parsons — had ever attempted before and has never attempted since, making this one of the most original pop songs ever written.
4. "Go Your Own Way"
“Go Your Own Way” is the definitive song from Rumours, the song that best represents the tone of the album: bitter and emotionally volatile, yet presented in a sleek, catchy and accessible package. It was the beginning of Lindsey Buckingham’s signature fury that would bring his music so much of an edge, and which he would more perversely explore two years later on Tusk.
5. "Gypsy"
Though Fleetwood Mac’s music took a bit of a dive during the '80s, they were still able to adapt to the decade much better than most of their '60s and '70s contemporaries, largely due to the fact that Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Chrstine McVie were first pop songwriters and rock stars second. “Gypsy” is arguably the peak of Stevie Nicks’s post-'70s output, a beautiful slice of pop that boasts one of Lindsey Buckingham’s greatest guitar solos.
6. "I Don’t Want to Know"
Though Stevie Nicks’s songs tend to lean toward the moody and mysterious, she took an uncharacteristic turn toward jaunty folk pop for “I Don’t Want to Know,” giving us the most fun song off Rumours and the catchiest melody of any Fleetwood Mac song. There was even a Saturday Night Live sketch about how irresistibly fun this song is — even better, the sketch was from 2013, proving that the song is timeless.
7. "I Know I’m Not Wrong"
Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk is one of the most singular and unique albums of the '70s, if only for the experimental contributions of Lindsey Buckingham, who employed lo-fi, punk-influenced recording techniques for many of his songs on the album, such as “I Know I’m Not Wrong.” As experimental and raw and Buckingham got, however, he never forgot that these are pop songs, and “I Know I’m Not Wrong” is one of the best he ever wrote.
8. "Landslide"
It is hard to believe that a song as ubiquitous as “Landslide” was never released as a single, but that is just a testament to how overwhelmingly beautiful it is. Few things in art are objective, but this is an objectively gorgeous song, in no small part due to Stevie Nicks’s magnificent melodies and Lindsey Buckingham’s heavenly guitar arrangement, particularly his sepia-toned country solo in the middle.
9. "Rhiannon"
“Rhiannon” was the first Fleetwood Mac single written by Stevie Nicks, and served as the world’s introduction to one of pop’s darkest and most mysterious voices. Lindsey Buckingham’s opening guitar figure is still among the most striking and distinctive to have ever graced a pop song, and arguably served as a distant precursor to the post-punk/gothic rock scene of the early '80s.
10. "Tusk"
There are 20 songs on Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, nearly all of them more accessible and traditionally pop than the title track, and yet the title track is what was ultimately chosen to be the album’s lead single, which goes to show how invincible Lindsey Buckingham felt in 1979. There is nothing else that sounds like “Tusk”: It was recorded live with a marching band in an empty stadium, and somehow sounds equally influenced by Middle Eastern, African and Eastern European music, with pretty much none of the blues, pop, folk or country traits the band was previously known for.
What are your favorite Fleetwood Mac songs? Let us know down in the comments section.
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