You really aren't going to let this go are you? For all your complaints about this board, you come in here and make a blatantly provocative statement about Lindsey's talent, and you think that's okay.

AllMusic is hardly the "gold standard" for album reviews. It's still just one reviewer's opinion of each album. I read a lot of music review websites, and plenty of people take issue with AllMusic ratings. I disagree with their ratings of individual albums quite a bit myself.

Metacritic might be more useful, as it aggregates all reviews for an album. Granted, only Lindsey's and Stevie's recent work is included, but Lindsey's average rating is 75, and Stevie's is below 70. Stevie has one great album, her first one, and then it drops off for her. Lindsey's talent hasn't dropped off as sharply, and his recent albums are far better than hers.

For what's it worth, there is no way 24 Karat Gold is a 4 1/2 star album.

I never said anything about Lindsey's talent. He is extraordinarily talented as a producer, arranger, and guitarist. I was responding to folks on this forum who are posting that Lindsey was the only talent in the band and that's ridiculous. The members needed each others talents. Stevie and Christine are great songwriters. Lindsey is a great producer/arranger. And together they made great music. As far as Lindsey's solo career, it's been a very mixed bag of well-produced, well-performed albums with very hit and miss songwriting. Stevie's solo albums have had great songs with hit and miss production. They're obviously much better together than apart.

Metacritic is the gold standard and he’s got great reviews on that site.

Lindsey's overall solo career Metacritic score is 76 which falls in the "generally favorable" range. Thus, solid but not great solo albums.

Not according to Sugar Mick! :lol:

to insert some much needed positivity here:

Hey @LBuckingham, just a GREAT show in DC tonight! Loved all the positive energy in that room tonight. You’re a class act. It’s was special to be a part of it. Thanks!l pic.twitter.com/BO2bSctva7

— Tom Fitzgerald (@FitzFox5DC) October 20, 2018

It behooves you to scan through the Blue Letter Archives on the Penguin to see the tip of the iceberg of widespread critical opinion about Lindsey's solo work. Estimation of his body of work is high, indeed, from American critics.

What makes AllMusic the gold standard? I've never heard it put that way. It's an expedient, convenient go-to for reviews, and Stephen Erlewine is an intelligent reviewer. But I'm not following how convenience and sense necessarily make for a reviewing gold standard. American newspaper and magazine critics (with whom I'm most familiar) who have nothing to do with AllMusic have amused and enlightened generations of pop and rock fans, and have helped shape the face of an art form (criticism, not music).

Who in his right mind would put AllMusic as a critical standard ahead of Bob Christgau, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, J.D. Considine, Steve Pond, Steve Simels, Noel Coppage, Stephen Holden, Connie Johnson, Cameron Crowe, John Rockwell, Bob Hilburn, Kristine McKenna, Joel Selvin, Dave Marsh, John Swenson, Gary Graff, Sylvie Simmons, Jon Landau, Bob Palmer, Joel Selvin, Ben Fong-Torres, and I could go on and on (incidentally, I rattle off this list of excellent critics by memory, and I could, with time, rattle off the publications they wrote for and even quote from many of their Fleetwood Mac reviews).

Lindsey's reputation has always been one of critic's pet; Stevie's has never been that (although an occasional outlier jumps on her bandwagon, like Jancee Dunn or Dennis Hunt). He is the critical darling; she is the arena filler and album seller—that's one of those truths that Fleetwood fans learn early on in their reading about the band. Your total ignorance of that commonplace truth (really, it's a cliché) lends me to believe even more than I already did that you are very new to the Mac fan "community." Of course, if I'm wrong, you'll forgive me.

Check out No. 36 in this list of the 50 best of 2017 from the Rolling Stone staff.

oh please Mick. He is highly regarded by anyone who knows anything about music. Now go buy some more scarves.

Mind my asking for examples of bad songwriting on his solo albums? I know he has certainly written some clunkers, but I want to get a better grasp on your taste.

What in your opinion are some of Stevie's great songs?

That's kinda the reason for all the drama on the board lately.

Yup. Mick (sugar M) listen, most of us used to be big Stevie fans. I love her early solo work, and adore her work on the first 3 mac albums. I hung in there and was forgiving of the subsequent solo albums. but I started cringing when i heard her vocals on Rock a little. After Mirage she was hit and miss. I did however love a lot of In your Dreams. Lindsey for me has had a much more consistent quality of material in his solo career, and has only gotten better IMO. The real reason I can't stand Stevie? I started noticing a few years ago in her interviews that she would say stuff that really rubbed me the wrong way. Then she refused to record with FM. Then she would be all over the place with why she didn't like to record. She lies... a lot. So when she got LB fired? DEAD.TO.ME.

Your saying that Lindsey's solo work is critically acclaimed doesn't make it true. Lindsey's work in FM has been critically acclaimed no doubt. His solo work not so much. His overall Metacritic solo album ranking (includes all major publications) is 76 out of 100 which puts him in the "generally favorable" region and not critically acclaimed.

Well, you've presented one side of the story. The other story, of course, is that Stevie and Mick had enough of Lindsey's behavior (as documented in the book "Storms") and wanted the band to be a peaceful, happy work environment.

My opinion is that Stevie is a far better songwriter than Lindsey while Lindsey is, without question, a far better arranger/producer. Lindsey has never written a song of the quality of "Sisters of The Moon", "Dreams", "Beautiful Child", "Storms", "Sara", "Gypsy", "Rhiannon", "Silver Springs" ... and the list goes on and on. Of course, that's my opinion and others are free to disagree. I've listened repeatedly to Lindsey's solo albums and his recent Anthology and I find most of his songs without sufficient melodic flow and dynamic variance. Some of them are exercises in guitar prowess, but that doesn't make them good songs.

But that's just your theory. There's no evidence to support that the band wasn't a happy environment for the most part. Christine was quite vocal about enjoying the tour with Lindsey, and Mick had always seemed to get along with him fine. The issue is clearly between Lindsey and Stevie, but to act like Lindsey hasn't changed in the past 40 years is ridiculous. You want to lock him in to past behavior, but you don't actually know what he's like now. People do change, amd if anything I think Lindsey's been walking on eggshells around Stevie since SYW.

You just prefer Stevie's style of songwriting, and that's fine. But she's not "far better". And her songs tend to be pretty dull musically, whatever "dynamic variance" there is comes from Lindsey's arrangements.

"Go Your Own Way" is just as good as the songs you listed, as well as I'm So Afraid, Never Going Back Again, Walk a Thin Line, IKINW, Trouble, Go Insane, and plenty more. I do think Stevie's songs tend to have more of an emotional resonance than his, but musically they're just as good. What he can do, she can't do, and vice versa. She can't write those type of songs at all, and all the FM songs you listed depend on Lindsey's arrangements to make them hits. And Stevie liked the "Can't Go Back" music enough to sing "Wild Heart" over it, and that song would have been better as a collaboration than either song they came up with separately.

Notice how you didn't list any of Stevie's solo songs? I guess her solo career isn't that great after all.

I just think you're selling Lindsey's songwriting abilities short. Neil Finn apparently likes his songs enough to sing them every night, and I'm sure he had a say in which songs he would sing.