Say You Will sales ten years after release

[bethelblues]

Originally Posted by KarmaContestant

Oh come on. No peasant woman was ever so clean or had hair so smoothly brushed. Or a dress so finely made. And certainly, no peasant owned such a perfectly shiny white horse with a halo that followed them around.

Exactly, the hair makes her Stevie Nicks. She's not in character or anything. I can only laugh when I think of what Lindsey might have said (not to Stevie, of course) upon first glimpsing the album cover.

[michelej1]

That's the point. She looks like Stevie Nicks, not a Welsh witch and not particularly mystical. I really don't think STEVIE does horses, although she has been on them when playing characters. The fact that she is herself in that photo makes the horse terribly incongruent to my eyes. Michele

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by michelej1

I used to go to the library and look at Billboard, because a subscription was too much for me to afford and I'd go to the record store and they would have these "new release" press memos that I would ask the clerk if I could see.

I'm glad you said this because it reminded me how I used to go to my favorite record store and gladly wait a week or two for the current issue of Billboard to be given to me. This went on for years and years. My favorite column was Boxscore. I was always excited to see how well Stevie or FM were doing in concert and how much money they were making. I actually once purchased a six month subscription so I could get them mailed to me. This was in 1984 and FM or Stevie didn't do any touring then. It felt like a large waste of money because there was hardly anything at all pertaining to them in the magazine at that time, but I did learn a lot of how the music business ran.

[evenstevie23]

Originally Posted by michelej1

As with a cordon, a barricade is not a unique concept, but saying "thrown down like a barricade" does not make a particularly smooth lyric. I always find myself singing "hurricane" instead.

Michele

After watching the Youtube version where Lindsey is trying to direct Stevie on her person usage in "Thrown Down" and she retorts that that is how she writes as a poet, etc, I have found myself singing the words you describe. I thought I was the only one.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by vivfox

I'm glad you said this because it reminded me how I used to go to my favorite record store and gladly wait a week or two for the current issue of Billboard to be given to me. This went on for years and years. My favorite column was Boxscore. I was always excited to see how well Stevie or FM were doing in concert and how much money they were making. I actually once purchased a six month subscription so I could get them mailed to me. This was in 1984 and FM or Stevie didn't do any touring then.

You made Christine cry.

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by SteveMacD

You made Christine cry.

Her audience capacity wasn't large enough to enter Billboard's Boxscores.

[Macfanforever]

I always love SYW.It got great radio airplay and all tunes are great.

[RockawayBlind]

Originally Posted by KenB

The most radio-friendly songs on SYW are Thrown Down, What's the World Coming To, and Bleed to Love Her. I would have released them as singles in that order.

I think SYW is also a pretty good single, though the song is a bit dull. In my sequencing, I front-load the album with these songs because they are more commercially appealing. In the old days, bands would put the better songs, or the ones they thought would be singles, up front. SYW suffers in this regard because it gets too weird too quickly.

[michelej1]

Yes, I'm no fan of Over and Over, but I think the first 3 songs do give you a good representation of what you're going to find on that looong album.

SYW needed to do that. Open with Say You Will and Peacekeeper .

Michele

[Ulpian]

Originally Posted by Macfanforever

I always love SYW.It got great radio airplay and all tunes are great.

It has grown on me. I think there are some beautiful songs, but there is also some padding / utter rubbish.

I could easily have cut Red Rover, Silver Girl and Come.

For me this was the first album that came out when I was a real fan. I got really into FM just as The Dance tour had stopped. I suppose I was disappointed that Christine didn't feature beyond BTLH and SYHA and at the time that really put me off.

Now, I would say Peacekeeper and Thrown Down are up there with my favourite FM songs.

I also quite like that you can hear Christine on BTLH, particularly. Although I like The Dance version, the studio track feels like a nice 'goodbye' to the five-person lineup as I hear them all on it.

[TheSorcerer]

Two of my favourite Fleetwood Mac songs appear on Say You Will - Illume and Steal Your Heart Away. The main problem with the album is that it's bloated and full of filler. If they had cut maybe 6 tracks and kept 12 it would have been a really strong album.

My ideal 12 track album would be:

What's the World Coming to
Illume
Thrown Down
Miranda
Say You Will
Peacekeeper
Come
Running Through the Garden
Steal Your Heart Away
bleed to love her
Destiny Rules
Goodbye Baby

I do prefer the version of Thrown Down that Stevie recorded during the TISL album sessions to the one on SYW. It's definitely a better album than The Eagles comeback album in 2007. That was a bloody snoozefest.

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by TheSorcerer

If they had cut maybe 6 tracks and kept 12 it would have been a really strong album.

In the real world, what if they had done what you asked? You know the outcome would have been six of your chosen songs would have been cut and the ones you call turds would have been included. With 18 songs there are so many for you to love and hate that what you end up enjoying becomes a full albums worth of material anyway.

[elle]

Originally Posted by vivfox

In the real world, what if they had done what you asked? You know the outcome would have been six of your chosen songs would have been cut and the ones you call turds would have been included. With 18 songs there are so many for you to love and hate that what you end up enjoying becomes a full albums worth of material anyway.

exactly! i'm reading all these posts where people state how their main problem is that they got too much music for their money.

this problem statement is usually followed by which songs they'd select to stay and which ones they'd cut. and almost every one of the posters has a very different selection, calling completely different songs brilliant or filler.

nevertheless, it is very interesting to see which songs different people select and how different tastes are. and i do have my own selection too, of course. mostly my preference would have been Lindsey releasing original Gift of Screws and him never ever getting around to co-writing WTWCT. of Stevie's songs on SYW i do love Destiny Rules, and can listen to Say You Will, plus Thrown Down is very, as Lindsey would say, fleetwood-mac-y.

i agree that album sequencing is atrocious.

re left-field-different-progressive or whatever you would call them songs that so many would exclude, remember, that's what FM was going for at the time. Lindsey was not going for fleetwood-mac-y, he was going for we-are-still-great-evolving-band. at least according to everything he said in that DR doc. i guess they somehow decided after SYW that world wanted just BN fleetwood-mac-y... so that's what they seem to be trying to do with current set of songs, mostly.

i mean, Sad Angel is practically a FM/LB formula for a perfect pop song - a bit of verses, a layer of catchy chorus, a layer of catchy guitar parts, small guitar solo, a layer of bitc*ing about something the other band member did, mix it up and voila! the result is still a great extremely catchy song, don't get me wrong.

[Say You Will]

I agree. I feel the songs on SYW are some of Stevie's strongest in years. Much more than IYD, While I understand why people are having issues with the length of the CD and the number of songs. I am very happy that it was released like this. To me, the more FM songs the better.
I also miss Christine's presence but she didn't want to contribute and that was that..

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by kak125

i think they would have to pay for an audit and i guess nobody is going to do that. ugh!

Why bother at this point? It's not like they have anything to prove. If it were me I'd just sit back and collect the checks.