Mirage nit picks

[jjfabbsy]

Even though Stevie had the least time on this album, I think her contributions are easily the best of the 3 songwriters...and I find myself listening mainly to her tracks in isolation when bringing out "Mirage".

Christine and Lindsey's tracks lacked impact - "light" is probably the most apt description here in my opinion. I think the Mirage live concert displayed the potential of some of their tracks here - particularly "Love in Store" which could have been quite memorable if it were made more "rockier"....may have even been another one of those Fleetwood Mac hits you hear on the radio along with "Hold Me".

Remember the context of this album and it might explain the lack of fire in Lindsey and Christine, as well as Stevie's lack of airtime. Stevie was coming off the highly successful "Bella Donna" album....Lindsey was coming off his 50's inspired "Law and Order" album....and Christine was looking to release her second solo album. Minds were definitely elsewhere here.

Another nit pick - the mastering on the digital versions of Mirage lack impact, even the 24 bit HD Tracks versions. Purists might enjoy the fact that the recording is not affected by the "loudness" wars, but I still think this needs to be remastered and beefed up for newer systems.

[Wdm6789]

Originally Posted by jjfabbsy

Even though Stevie had the least time on this album, I think her contributions are easily the best of the 3 songwriters...and I find myself listening mainly to her tracks in isolation when bringing out "Mirage".

Christine and Lindsey's tracks lacked impact - "light" is probably the most apt description here in my opinion. I think the Mirage live concert displayed the potential of some of their tracks here - particularly "Love in Store" which could have been quite memorable if it were made more "rockier"....may have even been another one of those Fleetwood Mac hits you hear on the radio along with "Hold Me".

Remember the context of this album and it might explain the lack of fire in Lindsey and Christine, as well as Stevie's lack of airtime. Stevie was coming off the highly successful "Bella Donna" album....Lindsey was coming off his 50's inspired "Law and Order" album....and Christine was looking to release her second solo album. Minds were definitely elsewhere here.

Another nit pick - the mastering on the digital versions of Mirage lack impact, even the 24 bit HD Tracks versions. Purists might enjoy the fact that the recording is not affected by the "loudness" wars, but I still think this needs to be remastered and beefed up for newer systems.

Hold Me and Only Over You are great Christine songs. Love in Store could be a little rockier and longer and Wish You Were Here is beautiful but boring. They always did a better job with Stevie's slow songs than they did with Christine's. Lindsey's songs on Mirage need more of a kick. His Mirage songs need a little Tusk in them. (By "Tusk in them" I mean his good Tusk songs, not the filler minute and a half songs.)

[bobwelchera]

Originally Posted by Wdm6789

Don't get me wrong, I love all their music, they're amazing artists, but I'm enjoying these discussions.


Mirage:

1. Love in Store could be a little longer and rearranged a little bit. Put the chorus after the first verse instead of going right into the second verse. So it would be: verse one, chorus, verse two, chorus, instrumental break, chorus, instrumental outro. The keyboards should be slightly more prominent also. What can I say? I like pianos.

2. Can't Go Back is good but it's too light. I liked the darkness of Lindsey's songs on Tusk. His songs on Mirage are pretty light and poppy. I like that he was trying to get back to traditional Fleetwood Mac for Mirage but his songs on this album need more of an edge. Can't Go Back is also too short. I don't like when songs are less than three minutes.

3. That's Alright could be longer as well. It should have an instrumental between the two verses and they should sing the chorus twice after the second verse. That's Alright is really underrated, in my opinion. It's a great song. It's an epitome of a Rumours era Fleetwood Mac song. I wish they performed it on the Mirage tour. It would have sounded so good live in 1982.

4. Book of Love, it just needs some Stevie and Christine on it.

5. It would have been awesome if the five and a half minute version of Gypsy was on the album. I also think Lindsey and Christine should sing "lightening strikes maybe once maybe twice" and "she was just a wish." It sounds like only Lindsey singing those lines. They just made it look like they were both singing in the music video.

6. I love Only Over You. I just don't like the line "angel please don't go." I think "baby please don't go" would sound better. We all know Dennis Wilson was no angel. This song would have also sounded awesome live in 1982.

7. I also love Empire State. It just needs to be a little longer, it could also use some Stevie and Christine on backup vocals. A music video for this song would have been cool. They needed a music video for one of Lindsey's songs from Mirage. I guess they kinda killed two birds with the Hold Me video because it's both Lindsey and Christine. A music video with the band wandering around New York City or something for Empire State. I'm sure they could have made a cool video. The Gypsy and Hold Me videos were awesome.

8. Hold Me is my favorite song of all time, but there are some change I would make. I love Christine and Lindsey singing in unison, but Christine's voice should be a little bit more prominent than Lindsey's. Secondly, they should have used better grammar. "You and me have plenty of time" instead of "you and me got plenty of time" and "I don't want any damage" instead of "I don't want no damage."

9. Oh Diane is filler. It's kinda catchy, but kind of a waste of space. I would have cut it to enhance the other songs on the album.

10. I like the 1982 live version of Eyes of the World better. The album version should be more like that. Except it doesn't need Stevie and Christine sharing most of the vocals with Lindsey, I like that just for the live version

11. Wish You Were Here is a great Christine love song, but it's kinda boring.

Certainly an interesting take. Here's my response to them!

1. I think Love In Store's arrangement is fine - the somewhat-abnormal setup adds to it, in my opinion.

2. You're a fan of longer tunes, I see. Here, Can't Go Back's succinctness does leave you wanting a bit more, but I think it's great too. Classic pop songs (see Motown, 50s, and 60s in general,) rarely went beyond the three-minute mark. That being said, I'm a huge fan of the original prog rock songs of six minutes-plus.

3. I friggin' love "That's Alright." Not a fan of your length suggestion on this one either. How crazy would it have been if someone thought, just randomly, to submit that song to country stations at the time? There easily would've been another hit single.

4. Lindsey's pulling a Tusk, Part II with his songs on this one, hence the lack of backing on most of his tunes, methinks.

5. *Definitely* agree about using the long version of Gypsy here, though. It's one of those songs you don't want to end, and I'm rather surprised the single-like version found its way to the album.

6. "Only Over You" is a cute song, but not Christine's strongest. Her contribution at the sixth spot on the upcoming "Tango" was much stronger.

7. Grr. Grr. Grr. "Empire State" is the worst Fleetwood Mac song. Although a video for the tune would've been interesting, it should've been on Lindsey's Law and Order, and replaced with "Goodbye Angel" - a far prettier song.

8. "Straight Back" is okay. This is where I am kind of bummed Stevie had the urge to record a full solo album - she saved some of her best material for it...perhaps some for '83 as well.

9. I would sing "Hold Me" all the friggin' time in ninth grade, 13 years ago. Why change the grammar, though? The song is playful, and one of the relative few times I'm open to improper phrasing, lol. Also, "I don't want any damage" adds another syllable to the melody, causing an unnecessary rush in the lyric. Moreover, the subsequent line is sung "but how'm I gonna manage you?" versus "but how am I gonna manage you?" because it's the same situation.

10. Most folks seem to dislike "Oh Diane" tremendously on here. I don't fully understand why. Perhaps it could be replaced with "Cool Water," but I like the 1950s feel of it. Maybe that's the reason - it sticks out like a sore thumb?

11. "Eyes Of The World" is fun, and would've been an excellent closing tune.

12. "Wish You Were Here" is sweet, but unnecessary - basically "Only Over You" Part II. Christine's my favorite, but I feel like she doubled-up here. I wonder what other songs were at her disposal at this time.

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by pattyfan

What about Straight Back?

Kevin

Weak song. Good music. Powerful vocal. Nice idea but lazy, lazy lyrics. Probably the weakest song on the album but not the least memorable.

[Wdm6789]

I think Only Over You is one of Christine's best songs. IMO, it's better than any of her songs on Tusk. It's better than Oh Daddy and Sugar Daddy and Songbird.

[landslide95]

Originally Posted by stevierocks87

-Stevie DEFINITELY should have gotten 1 more song, 3 songs on a 12 song album? Come on. Her voice was absolutely sublime in this era, at its peak IMO, and she had so many great songs.

I have to agree with you. Mirage is one of my top two in terms of albums so I would have liked to hear more Stevie on this as I considered her songs to be of better quality.

It seems to be a running theme on all albums in regards to how little space Stevie has for her songs. I think the album with more than 3 or 4 of her songs seems to be Tusk but that is because it is a double album. I can't blame Stevie for wanting a solo career. Lindsey is a genius but he definitely is weak compared to Stevie when it comes to writing. I mean even when Stevie's lyrics don't make sense, they still seem to and we can connect to them. But that is a given!

My fav on this album was That's Alright.

[Hawkeye]

Not really a nitpick, more of a very broad observation with Mirage. Stevie's three songs are the only truly great or even really good songs on app the entire album. I've never really liked Hold Me and the only other great song is Eyes of the World and that's only because of of the incredible live versions done on the 2003 and 2013 tours. Both times, absolutely a top 5 song of the night. The song is amazing how they play it in the 21st century. But going off the album version, it's as insignificant as the other 9 non-stevie songs. Now I don't hate and or skip all 9 songs. I find book of love and love in store in particular to be very enjoyable songs, but just the overall quality of songs from the 2 of Them is, I hate to use this word, but pathetic compared to what they had delivered just 3 years earlier on Tusk. And for Lindsey just 1 year earlier on Law and Order. Obviously on Tango, it was Stevie's turn to drag down an album and now 30 years later she's currently contributing literally nothing, but in 1982 at least she was the only reason to own a fleetwood Mac album

There is absolutely a reason their 70's albums get the special treatment to their 2 80's albums with all the reissues; They are superior in every way by large margins! Now I'd love a mirage reissue just for the chance of the bonus discs being live concerts from the mirage tour but that has nothing to do with a desire to see the actual album released.

[On Ice]

Overall, I like Mirage, the songs are tight and well performed. As many have said, the album contains two of the band's best ever songs in Gypsy and Hold Me. Problem is, the other tracks are not even close to the bar set by those songs. Sure, there's some sweet vocals splashed throughout, but with weaker songs, it just doesn't have the impact of the far superior 3 predecessors. My biggest beef though is that its weak spots ruin the flow and firmly take the band off its classic rock pedestal and has the masses questioning the band's relevance (at the time anyways). Lindsey's songs are the weakest on the album and his shying away from his Tusk creativity did Mirage no favours. Christine needed at least one killer ballad to make it work, unfortunately Only Over You and Wish you Were Here were too generic to meet the Warm Ways, Over and Over or Songbird standards. By far the biggest miss was turning away from Smile at You or If You Were My Love, heck even Rock a Little could have been played with... at least two great Stevie songs that needed to be fully Mac realized in the day.

[MikeInNV]

Originally Posted by Wdm6789

Secondly, they should have used better grammar. "You and me have plenty of time" instead of "you and me got plenty of time"

"You and me have plenty of time" is incorrect as well. It would have to be "You and I have plenty of time."

[jjfabbsy]

Originally Posted by MikeInNV

"You and me have plenty of time" is incorrect as well. It would have to be "You and I have plenty of time."

Now this is true nitpicking!

[Wdm6789]

Originally Posted by MikeInNV

"You and me have plenty of time" is incorrect as well. It would have to be "You and I have plenty of time."

Good catch.

[FuzzyPlum]

Originally Posted by Wdm6789

Secondly, they should have used better grammar. "You and me have plenty of time" instead of "you and me got plenty of time" and "I don't want any damage" instead of "I don't want no damage."

Would you tell that to Bob Dylan?

[Wdm6789]

Originally Posted by FuzzyPlum

Would you tell that to Bob Dylan?

No, this nit pick is only for Hold Me. The song would sound no different with those small changes because the words are so small. I realize it is not always practical to use perfect proper grammar in song writing.