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Originally Posted by jbrownsjr
but her songwriting is still the best... it's the arranging that needs help
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Unfocused, loose arrangements were also the problem of the 1984 solo album. A pop-song track as simple & straightforward as a typical Christine McVie song should adhere to the linear progression of a story: rising action, climax, denoument. Or the traditional progression of musical form: exposition, development, recapitulation. Or something along those lines. The tracks on Rumours have this. They need this. A Christine McVie song always benefits from such formulation. You can play me any ten-second snippet from "You Make Loving Fun" or "Don't Stop" or "Say You Love Me" & I can tell you where it goes in the track. But try that with "I'm the One" or "Love Will Show Us How." The lump of clay must be molded & remolded & then looked at in a particular light & then molded again! If you're going to just jam freely on a pop album, you'd better express some highly interesting & unusual textures & approaches, otherwise you risk reminding the listener of the band he heard at the bar last week.
For all the empty dismissing of Buckingham among the fashionably iconoclastic, he had the ability to sit down & arrange a track so that it had progression & movement. The good of such formulation is that the human ear, by all evidence, seems to find joy in this.