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Old 02-07-2021, 04:43 PM
FuzzyPlum FuzzyPlum is offline
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Default Songs from Rumours Ranked in Greatness

Songs from Fleetwood Mac's Masterpiece Ranked in Order of Greatness

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/fleetwo...worst-to-best/

Fleetwood Mac are a band synonymous with in-fighting and sexual mischievousness, so much so, that the mere mention of the band often raises eyebrows as well as heartbeats. It’s a synergy which was largely founded in their 1977 LP Rumours and the catastrophes that surrounded but never permeated it The album is not only a commercial success unlike any other (45 million copies sold and growing every year) but a masterpiece born out of chaos.

At the time of recording the band couldn’t have been further apart in their personal relationships. The two couples of the group, John and Christine McVie as well as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, were both crumbling before their very eyes while Mick Fleetwood was also going through a divorce. Things at Camp Fleetwood were far from good but they still needed to deliver a record for their label. They complied and delivered one of the definitive albums of the entire century.

This holistic heartbreak coupled with the group’s insatiable appetite for cocaine meant that the recording process would go down in history as one of the most dysfunctional in rock and roll folklore. It makes the parallel tone of the record feel all the more amazing as the group wrap the dark truth in a sun-shining sonic duvet, protecting it from the world.

It is a record that is chock full of personal songs, barbed attacks at fellow bandmembers, and anthemic sing-your-heart-out belters. Below we rank the songs of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours from worst to best,

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours ranked from worst to best:

11. ‘I Don’t Want To Know’
A blast from the past as this country-rock anthem’s birthplace can be charted to Nicks’ early career. It was a track that Nicks didn’t want to be included on Rumours, but the band insisted. Perhaps they picked up on the song’s acceptance of wandering eyes or perhaps it was Nicks’ belting vocal that convinced them.

Despite the gentle rhythms and Nicks’ always impressive vocal performance, this song falls to the bottom of the pile. But, considering the record it came from, that’s no condemnation.


10. ‘Never Going Back Again’
Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham’s songwriting is so widely applauded that it often overshadows his wonderful ability with the guitar.

Here, Buckingham not only gets to do his best work, offering a technicality and musical prowess often overlooked but gets to go back in time as he works his way up and down the fretboard in a tribute to yesteryear.


9. ‘Oh Daddy’
This one is certainly from this side of the pond. Christine McVie does some of her best work as she offers up a deeply emotional cut in ‘Oh Daddy’. Dark and unfiltered the track eventually brightens into an Americana anthem.

It’s the kind of song that could be heard across the collective airwaves of the seventies, Charming, golden and infused with America’s finest, it’s a dream but not quite the ultimate Fleetwood anthem.


8. ‘Second Hand News’
The opening notes of one of the best selling albums ever will always last long in the memories of its audience. Rumours is no different as ‘Second Hand News’ and Buckingham’s chugging guitar set the pace for the album ahead.

It’s another shining example of a jaunty and joy-filled tune hiding the personal loss of another heartening relationship. It’s the kind of song that Fleetwood Mac created in their sleep and t slides under the radar as one of the record’s better anthems.


7. ‘Songbird’
A simply gorgeous track is next up from Christine McVie as she delicately sings about her love for another. The awkward moment of comes when you remember that she was singing this about a man other than her recently divorced husband, who just so happens to be playing bass across from you.

McVie avoids being too sloppy, and instead, nails the juxtaposing feeling of the loneliness of love. It’s another moment on which we get to see behind the curtain of Fleetwood Mac


6. ‘You Make Loving Fun’
Another McVie triumph sees the funky notes of ‘You Make Loving Fun’ take the next spot. An unstoppably infectious groove is only trumped by Buckingham’s expert use of the guitar. It’s a mark of the band’s undying best quality—their converging talents go together with sumptuous ease.

Songs like this are what Rumours is all about. Though not the most famous song on the LP, far from it in fact, the song is still a robust, romantic and altogether rhythmic encounter that can transport you from your stereo to a brand new plain.


5. ‘The Chain’
A patchwork song built out of several different pieces from different members of the band, the track remains one of the most unifying moments on the album. Moving effortlessly across the seventies spectrum the group show their mettle on this one and announce themselves as patrons of music in every form.

“‘The Chain’ basically came out of a jam,” recalled Mick Fleetwood of the song’s composition. “That song was put together as distinct from someone literally sitting down and writing a song. It was very much collectively a band composition.


4. ‘Gold Dust Woman’
There’s no doubt that Stevie Nicks and the rest of Fleetwood Mac soon became monster cocaine snorters. The group wrote most of the acclaimed album Rumours while snorting huge amounts of the drug. At this stage, before her snorting ended up burning a huge hole in her nose, Nicks was still enraptured by the possibilities the song offered.

‘Gold Dust Woman’, which featured on the aforementioned record, sees Nicks describe the suit of armour the drug provided her. The potential cocaine offered her as a songwriter seemed huge for NIcks, and this perception would almost end up costing her her life.


3. ‘Dreams’
While not a direct attack on his character, this track was squarely pointed at Nicks’ former boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham. A Nicks composition sees a simple rhythm from Fleetwood and McVie is flecked with the Buckingham’s smooth guitar. It’s another testament to the group’s professionalism that Buckingham was so happy to take this song to another level.

All of that adds extra weight to Nicks’ lyrics, hinting that the grass may not always be greener on the other side for Buckingham. “Thunder only happens when it’s raining / Players only love you when they’re playing” It is the very lifeblood on which this album propels itself to the top.


2. ‘Don’t Stop’
One of the most uplifting numbers on the record, Christine McVie turns the idea of moving on and getting on with your life (assumingly after a divorce?) into an undeniable toe-tapper. For a while, John McVie didn’t [pick up the references to their relationship within the song: “I never put that together. I’ve been playing it for years and it wasn’t until somebody told me, ‘Chris wrote that about you.’ Oh really?”

Built on Fleetwood’s driving percussion and McVie’s bar-pleasing piano the track is a kaleidoscopic view of the future we can all get behind. It’s also one of those songs that quietly confirms just how brilliant Fleetwood Mac are as a band.


1. ‘Go Your Own Way’
Okay, okay. You can all groan all at once. Of course, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours’ best song is the Lindsey Buckingham penned arrow with Stevie Nicks’ name on. While Fleetwood’s drumming is impeccable and the song’s subject matter is honest and raw, it is Lindsey Buckingham’s incredible vocal that takes this song over the edge.

Nick was apparently very hurt by the song’s claim “Packing up/Shacking up is all you want to do” but even that couldn’t stop her from belting out the backing vocals on this American rock radio gold. It’s hard to ignore the power of this track and when you hear it in the context of the album, it quickly anoints itself as the ruler of Rumours.

Though ‘Go Your Own Way’ is an undeniable bop, one could make an argument for any of the album’s songs reaching the top of the pile — that’s a testament to the sheer quality of Rumours.
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Old 02-07-2021, 06:26 PM
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Or another view from 2017 (harsh!) to add...

https://www.billboard.com/articles/c...d-anniversary/

It was 40 years ago today (Feb. 4) that Fleetwood Mac would release Rumours, one of the most successful albums of the rock era, and a rare mega-blockbuster whose thrills are as intricate and subtle as they are broad-stroked and head-smacking.

As much as the record lives on for the lore of the drugs and tangled-web heartbreak that fueled its writing and recording sessions, it's the unnervingly raw emotion and performance -- and the peerlessly immaculate composition and production -- that the album's soap-opera surroundings inspired that makes it still worth writing about in 2017.

Generations later, the songs on Rumours remain nearly as omnipresent on radio and in popular culture as they were in the Carter era, but the set remains exhilarating and inscrutable, because so few songs of love, faith and addiction have ever been this bloody or brilliant.

Here are the album's 11 tracks, ranked from worst to best. (And include an asterisk around No. 4 or 5 for classic B-side "Silver Springs," whose exclusion from the album is basically all you need to know about what a self-destructive hot streak Fleetwood Mac were on at the time.)

11. "Don't Stop"

The only one of the album's original megahits -- peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1977 -- that time and overplay have been somewhat unforgiving towards, its shimmering stomp feeling more pushy than empowering in its forward-march insistence. Bill Clinton didn't help, of course, but the fact that the song was co-optable for sloganeering purposes in the first place simply means that it was a cut more basic than the rest of Rumours to begin with.

10. "Oh Daddy"

If there's one song you forget about trying to count off the 11 tracks on Rumours, it's probably Christine McVie's penultimate creeper "Oh Daddy," a Neil Young-paced heartache testimony with perilously low self-esteem ("Why are you right when I'm so wrong/ I'm so weak but you're so strong?") It's not the most striking lyric or melody, but the song's gorgeously windswept production makes for some chilling moments, and also allows for a brilliant lead-in to the album's significantly more memorable closer.

9. "Songbird"

Apologies to Christine McVie, who ends up with the three lowest-ranked songs on the album -- she makes up for it with her fourth song on the set, which we'll get to much higher up -- and no hate meant for "Songbird," an entirely lovely piano-and-guitar ballad that makes an exquisite end to the album's A-side. But Fleetwood Mac only have one truly timeless, unforgettable acoustic anthem, and this isn't it.

8. "Second Hand News"

For one of classic rock's definitive albums, it remains a little jarring what a red-herring the set opens with: Lindsey Bukcingham's rollicking "Second Hand News," a sort of "Monday Morning" redux that points towards little of the intrigue and brutality of the rest of the album. Still, the folk jam sneaks in some bitterness among the knee-slapping -- "I know there's nothing to say/ Someone has taken my place" are the set's telling opening lines -- and "Won't you lay me down in tall grass and let me do my stuff" is pantheon-worthy euphemising.

7. "I Don't Want to Know"

Another of the set's folkier numbers, propelled ever forward by some antsy handclaps and a tempo that feels set about 10 bpm faster than it should, creating a nervous energy that would set the tone for much of the album's controversial follow-up, 1979's Tusk. Buckingham and co-lead Stevie Nicks sound almost breathless just trying to keep up, but still manage to bring the necessary anxiousness to point-of-no-return lyrics like "Finally baby/ The truth has been told/ Now you tell me that I'm crazy/ It's nothing that I didn't know."

6. "The Chain"

Not Rumours' best song but arguably its most definitive, and certainly the greatest team effort -- it's the album's only track in which all five members receive writing credits, and also the only one in which McVie, Buckingham and Nicks all contribute to the lead vocal. And with all the gorgeously frayed vocals of betrayal and broken promise, "The Chain" might still be most memorable for Mick Fleetwood's heartbeat-like bass drum, and the slithering John McVie low-end that introduces the song's inspired, not-getting-away-that-easy coda.

5. "Never Going Back Again"

The shortest song on Rumours but also one of the most complete, a masterfully finger-picked Buckingham solo piece that only features the rest of the band in ghostly backing vocals. "Been down one time/ Been down two times/ Never going back again" is a rare statement of resolve on an album full of emotional incapacitation, and as much of an affirmation as it makes from Lindsey's delivered perspective, it's just as devastating when considered from Stevie's received viewpoint.

4. "Gold Dust Woman"

Nicks has openly admitted that she has no idea what Rumours' mystical closing track is even about, which is probably one of the reasons it's played such a large part in building the frontwoman's own gypsy-woman mythology. With its desert-like production, guitar riffs spilling from everywhere like sand through the song's fingers, and Stevie's uniquely possessed vocals, "Gold Dust Woman" is as alluring and enigmatic as its singer -- a note of anti-closure for the LP to end on, the mysteries of love and life forever unknowable.

3. "Go Your Own Way"

A masterpiece of illogical layering and universal songwriting, Buckingham designed the verses of "Go Your Own Way" to sound like the world around him as he cried, "If I could, baby, I'd give you my world/ How can I when you won't take it from me?" before the sing-along chorus applied necessary order to the situation. But Buckingham's critical flaw in this brilliant stop-start rocker was in making going your own way sound less like a dismissal than a granting of release -- compared to spending further time in Lindsey's world of control, another lonely day seems pretty free and easy.

The secret weapon of Rumours, shimmying its way out from the thick of the album's B-side, just when you thought it was finally starting to run out of hits. The song's swagger is all hips, like writer McVie trying on a dazzling sequin dress for the first time, while the pre-chorus -- setting up a refrain that doesn't actually show up until the song's very end -- is the album's greatest revelation; Christine offering an ode of hymnal rapture to the man who got her believing in miracles, while the rest of the band plays her sighing gospel choir in the back.

1. "Dreams"

Fleetwood Mac's all-time greatest song (and only Hot 100 No. 1 hit) was a demonstration of the entire band's strengths, from Fleetwood's instantly recognizable opening drum fill to McVie's somehow singular two-note bass pattern to Christine's sweetly bubbling keys giving the groove its plush texture. But it was also the song that proved the band was never more themselves than when Stevie was on the mic, bringing both the thunder and the rain, her unguarded, open-veined rasp painting every one of her crystal visions in such rich, vibrant color that they actually sound like they're causing Buckingham's guitars to openly weep.
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Old 02-07-2021, 06:53 PM
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I think like Christine. Rumours is a full package. Its impossible to rank songs IMHO. Each song flows and adds to the other. Each is so good, I could not even try to rank them. I have a few that I like more than others but no way I could even begin to rank.
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Old 02-08-2021, 02:19 PM
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I’m always amazed that “Dreams” is cited as this album’s best song. Yes, it went to #1, yes, it’s got an amazing chorus, yes the arrangement is delicious, the vocal, too...but it’s very much a 70s hit. GYOW transcends time and place.

My ranking:

1. GYOW
2. YMLF
3. The Chain
4. Dreams
5. Oh Daddy
6. Songbird
7. IDWK
8. Don’t Stop
9. Gold Dust
10. Second Hand
11. NGBA

Get me on another day and the ranking might be different, though the top three remain the top three and the bottom two remain the bottom two.
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Old 02-08-2021, 03:30 PM
FuzzyPlum FuzzyPlum is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aleuzzi View Post
I’m always amazed that “Dreams” is cited as this album’s best song. Yes, it went to #1, yes, it’s got an amazing chorus, yes the arrangement is delicious, the vocal, too...but it’s very much a 70s hit. GYOW transcends time and place.

My ranking:

1. GYOW
2. YMLF
3. The Chain
4. Dreams
5. Oh Daddy
6. Songbird
7. IDWK
8. Don’t Stop
9. Gold Dust
10. Second Hand
11. NGBA

Get me on another day and the ranking might be different, though the top three remain the top three and the bottom two remain the bottom two.
1) GYOW
2) The Chain
3) YMLF

Toss the rest of them up in the air and see how they land. They could all be in any order on any given day.
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Old 02-08-2021, 06:01 PM
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Glad to see YMLF so high on your charts. It would be high on mine too. Good gosh, its perfect chemistry between Chris's funky synthesizer churning and Lindsey's insane guitar licks. When you add from the heart lyrics, it really is perfect.
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Old 02-09-2021, 02:24 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FuzzyPlum View Post
1) GYOW
2) The Chain
3) YMLF

Toss the rest of them up in the air and see how they land. They could all be in any order on any given day.
I was going to rank the top three exactly as you had, but it depends on the day as to whether YMLF gets 2 or 3. In actuality, the top three songs are all equally amazeballs and really all belong at #1.

Like you, I think the rest can pretty much fall under them as "great songs but not those three great songs."
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Old 02-08-2021, 06:22 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aleuzzi View Post
I’m always amazed that “Dreams” is cited as this album’s best song. Yes, it went to #1, yes, it’s got an amazing chorus, yes the arrangement is delicious, the vocal, too...but it’s very much a 70s hit. GYOW transcends time and place.
is it really? it's almost never cited as such on almost any best songs list? (did see it during fakebooks tour once, which i don't think was a coincidence, and then there's the list in this thread). usually GYOW is by far highest ranked FM song. then there are few others, and Dreams doesn't even make the list of 200 or 500 best classic rock songs. GYOW makes almost every single one.


My ranking:

1. Second Hand News
2. The Chain
3. GYOW
4. Gold Dust Woman
5. Don’t Stop
5. IDWK
5. YMLF
5. NGBA
5. Songbird
10. Dreams
11. Oh Daddy
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