Best Fleetwood Mac Songs
Fleetwood Mac were really three bands: Peter Green's British blues group, a transitional early-70s lineup, and the Buckingham-Nicks pop machine from 1975 onward. "Dreams", "The Chain" and "Go Your Own Way" come from the third. The first is where the surprises are.
One band, eighteen members, and two catalogues that barely sound related. Picking only from Rumours misses half the argument.
If you only play one
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams (1977)
Their only US number one and the cleanest way in: three writers, three instruments and almost nothing else on the track.
- 01
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
1977
Written in ten minutes on a bed in Sly Stone's studio. Two chords for the entire song, and the only US number one the band ever had.
- 02
Fleetwood Mac - The Chain
1977
The only track credited to all five members, because it was assembled from pieces of three abandoned songs. The bass break turns a patchwork into the best thing they recorded.
- 03
Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
1977
Buckingham writing an accusation and then making Nicks sing harmony on it every night for forty years. The drum pattern was Mick Fleetwood failing to copy a Stones song.
- 04
Fleetwood Mac - Silver Springs
1976
Cut from Rumours for running time and buried on a B-side. The 1997 live version, sung directly at Buckingham, is the definitive recording of it.
- 05
Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
1975
Written in Aspen at twenty-seven while deciding whether to give up music. The most covered song in the catalogue and the one that needs the least production.
- 06
Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon
1975
Based on a Welsh myth Nicks found in a paperback novel. Live, it stretched to eight minutes and became the performance that made her a star rather than a singer.
- 07
Fleetwood Mac - Everywhere
1987
Christine McVie writing the most purely joyful song the band ever released, a decade after everyone had stopped speaking. Its 2020s TikTok revival is entirely deserved.
- 08
Fleetwood Mac - Gypsy
1982
A song about being poor in San Francisco before any of it happened, recorded when they could afford anything. The nostalgia is real rather than staged.
- 09
Fleetwood Mac - Songbird
1977
Recorded live in an empty concert hall at three in the morning to get the room sound. Christine McVie's finest two and a half minutes and the album's deliberate exhale.
- 10
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
1979
The USC Trojan marching band on a pop single, following the biggest-selling album of the decade. Commercially disastrous and the bravest thing in the catalogue.
- 11
Fleetwood Mac - Sara
1979
Sixteen minutes in its original form, cut to six. The most Nicks-like song she wrote: half narrative, half incantation, and nobody agrees who it is about.
- 12
Fleetwood Mac - Gold Dust Woman
1977
The closer, recorded after eight takes at four in the morning with Nicks in a state she has described as barely conscious. The cocaine subtext is not subtext.
- 13
Fleetwood Mac - Albatross
1968
Peter Green's instrumental, a UK number one, and the record The Beatles openly admitted they were copying on "Sun King". A different band entirely.
- 14
Fleetwood Mac - Oh Well
1969
Two parts: a hard blues riff that predates heavy metal, then a four-minute Spanish guitar movement. Green fought the label to release both halves.
- 15
Fleetwood Mac - Little Lies
1987
The most 1987-sounding record here and still the best-constructed pop song of their late period. The vocal arrangement stacks three writers who were no longer collaborating.
Settle it properly
Lists are one person's opinion. Put the same question to your friends instead. Everyone submits their answer to
"Fleetwood Mac"
and the room votes blind on whose pick was best. Free, no account, about four minutes.
Start the BattleThe three versions of Fleetwood Mac
The first, from 1967 to 1970, was a British blues band led by Peter Green, one of the few guitarists B.B. King said made him nervous. "Albatross" and "Oh Well" are from this period and sound nothing like what came after.
The second, from 1970 to 1974, is the forgotten one: five albums, constant lineup changes, and one guitarist who left mid-tour to join a religious commune. Almost nobody plays these records and a few of them are very good.
The third arrived when Mick Fleetwood heard Lindsey Buckingham on a studio demo tape and hired him on the condition that Stevie Nicks came too. That version sold a hundred million records and is the only one most listeners know exists.
Why Rumours still dominates the conversation
Every couple in the band separated during the recording and none of them left, so the album is five people writing about each other and then singing backing vocals on the accusations. That situation is not repeatable and it is audible on every track.
It also happens to be immaculately made. The songs are short, the arrangements are dry, and there is almost no studio decoration, which is why a 1977 record still sounds current in a way its contemporaries do not.
The cost was Tusk. Buckingham reacted to selling forty million copies by making a deliberately strange double album, and the fact that it failed at the time is exactly why it has aged better than most of what did well.
Best Fleetwood Mac Songs, answered
What is Fleetwood Mac's best song?
"The Chain" and "Dreams" get named most often, for different reasons: "Dreams" was their only US number one, while "The Chain" is the only song credited to all five members of the classic lineup and the one they still open shows with.
What is Fleetwood Mac's most underrated song?
"Silver Springs", cut from Rumours for running time and released as a B-side, is the usual answer. Beyond that lineup, Peter Green's "Oh Well" and "Albatross" are the genuinely overlooked ones.
Who wrote most of Fleetwood Mac's hits?
The writing was split three ways. Christine McVie wrote "Everywhere", "Songbird" and "Little Lies"; Stevie Nicks wrote "Dreams", "Landslide" and "Rhiannon"; Lindsey Buckingham wrote "Go Your Own Way" and "Tusk". Peter Green wrote the entire first era.
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