Heart of Stone? Love Shines?
 

Which one do you choose?

Of the two, I certainly listen to "Love Shines" more frequently, which is also the only one of the two available on streaming services at the moment due to its inclusion on 50 Years - Don't Stop. However, I did give "Heart of Stone" another listen and found myself enjoying it more than I remembered. Whereas "Love Shines" appears to be just the quartet of Mick, John, Christine, and Billy, "Heart of Stone" has some prominent harmony vocals from Stevie. To my understanding, these songs were produced by Patrick Leonard, so I'm curious if both were recorded at the same time. It seems unusual that Stevie would only overdub vocals on one and not the other.

Anyways, both are strong offerings from Christine. Perhaps Time would have been less of a dud if they retained Patrick on production duties.

I love both songs but Love Shines wins out for me. One of John's best efforts IMO.

I think they’re almost equally excellent, but “Love Shines” has such a persuasive pre-chorus: “Love shines when I think of you / You make it happen, you make it true…”

To expand on Love Shines, it really is a fantastic song through and through. It gets lost in the shuffle because the time it was released and the fact it was on The Chain compilation but the songwriting, musicianship and production put it among the best FM songs to me.

I mentioned John in my previous post but I really think this is one of Billy's top performances as a musician in Fleetwood Mac. It's Christine's best song post-Tango for me. It's well written but musically it has some twists to it. There are so many layers to the song to enjoy.

I'm very fond of all four "new" tracks included on 25 Years - The Chain, although "Paper Doll" technically dated back to 1988 and "Make Me a Mask" was created during the recording sessions for Out of the Cradle and is a solo track all but in name. Billy's playing on "Love Shines" is more than capable, as is the rest of the instrumentation. If it had been released a little earlier, perhaps it would have been a hit.