The Chain makes '100 best songs of all time' list

[louielouie2000]

I noticed this article on NBC News just now, and had to wonder if our beloved Mac made the cut:

http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_ne...e-top-100?lite

Apparently they did:

http://consequenceofsound.net/2012/0...s-ever-100-51/

[michelej1]

^Nice. Here's the list.

01. The Beach Boys – “God Only Knows”
02. Talking Heads – “Once In a Lifetime”
03. Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone”
04. Michael Jackson – “Man in the Mirror”
05. The Beatles – “A Day in the Life”
06. The Velvet Underground – “Sister Ray”
07. The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy for the Devil”
08. Aretha Franklin – “Respect”
09. The Notorious B.I.G. – “Juicy”
10. Radiohead – “Idioteque”
11. Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
12. Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”
13. Led Zeppelin – “Dazed and Confused”
14. The Knife – “Heartbeats”
15. Jackson 5 – “I Want You Back”
16. Bruce Springsteen – “Jungleland”
17. Otis Redding – “Try a Little Tenderness”
18. Bob Dylan – “Shelter from the Storm”
19. Prince – “When Doves Cry”
20. Kate Bush – “Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God)”
21. Public Enemy – “Fight the Power”
22. Pulp – “Common People”
23. The Beatles – “Tomorrow Never Knows”
24. The Rolling Stones – “Gimme Shelter”
25. John Coltrane – “A Love Supreme Part 1: Acknowledgment”
26. Beastie Boys – “Shadrach”
27. The Who – “My Generation”
28. Neutral Milk Hotel – “In The Aeroplane Over the Sea”
29. Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
30. Jimi Hendrix Experience – “All Along The Watchtower”
31. Patti Smith Group – “Rock N Roll Nigger”
32. Black Sabbath – “War Pigs”
33. The Clash – “London Calling”
34. Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”
35. Daft Punk – “One More Time”
36. The Ronettes – “Be My Baby”
37. The Replacements – “I Will Dare”
38. Sam Cooke – “A Change is Gonna Come”
39. Talking Heads – “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)”
40. The Stooges – “Search and Destroy”
41. Al Green – “Let’s Stay Together”
42. Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”
43. David Bowie – “Space Oddity”
44. LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends”
45. N.W.A. – “**** Tha Police”
46. Madonna – “Like a Virgin”
47. The Beach Boys – “Good Vibrations”
48. Can – “Halleluhwah”
49. Metallica – “One”
50. Pavement – “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”
51. The Who – “Baba O’Riley”
52. Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
53. Arcade Fire – “Wake Up”
54. Pink Floyd – “Comfortably Numb”
55. Bob Dylan – “The Times They Are a-Changin’”
56. Stevie Wonder – “Superstition”
57. Thin Lizzy – “The Boys Are Back in Town”
58. Black Flag – “Rise Above”
59. Television – “Marquee Moon”
60. Nick Drake – “Pink Moon”
61. The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”
62. Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
63. U2 – “Where The Streets Have No Name”
64. OutKast – “B.o.B”
65. The Velvet Underground & Nico – “Waiting for the Man”
66. Portishead – “Roads”
67. Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”
68. Leonard Cohen – “Suzanne”
69. The Cure – “Just Like Heaven”
70. Ben E. King – “Stand By Me”
71. Björk – “Army of Me”
72. James Brown – “I Got You (I Feel Good)”
73. The Ramones – “Blitzkrieg Bop”
74. The Smiths – “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side”
75. Blondie – “Heart of Glass”
76. Missy Elliott – “Get Ur Freak On”
77. Sly and the Family Stone – “Hot Fun in the Summertime”
78. Run-D.M.C. – “Rock Box”
79. Fleetwood Mac – “The Chain”
80. Yo La Tengo – “Autumn Sweater”
81. Wu-Tang Clan – “Protect Ya Neck”
82. Depeche Mode – “Enjoy the Silence”
83. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – “The Message”
84. Sufjan Stevens – “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”
85. My Bloody Valentine – “Only Shallow”
86. The Band – “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
87. PJ Harvey – “Down By the Water”
88. Buzzcocks – “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)”
89. Kanye West – “Jesus Walks”
90. Pixies – “Hey”
91. Funkadelic – “One Nation Under A Groove”
92. Aphex Twin – “Windowlicker”
93. Devo – “Uncontrollable Urge”
94. Underworld – “Born Slippy .NUXX”
95. Sleater Kinney – “Dig Me Out”
96. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “From Her To Eternity”
97. A Tribe Called Quest – “Scenario”
98. Kraftwerk – “Autobahn”
99. Sonic Youth – “Teen Age Riot”
100. Phil Collins – “In The Air Tonight”

[michelej1]

http://consequenceofsound.net/2012/0...s-ever-100-51/
79. Fleetwood Mac – “The Chain”

Rumors, 1977

Maybe it’s the way the kick drum seems to quite literally find a way into your heart, setting the pace for how your body will work for the next four minutes and 31 seconds. Or the slight rattle of Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar string before the vocals kick in. Perhaps it’s the way his voice sounds knocked next to Stevie Nick’s howl, especially when you remember they were staring into one another’s souls as their relationship broke when this was written in 1976. It could be John McVie’s classic, chest-pumping bassline that creeps in halfway, created first before Buckingham musically adopted it, and Nicks wove lyrics around it. It’s hard to pick the best thing about “The Chain” because it’s the inseparable nature of these elements that makes it Rumour’s classic centerpiece, and the only song from the era credited to Fleetwood Mac’s five members. -Amanda Koellner

[MacShadowsBall]

I'm glad to see Fleetwood Mac and The Chain on this interesting list of songs.

[Sleepless-Child]

I love this list! It has some of my favorite songs (Hey, Ever Fallen in Love, Love will tear us apart, running up that hill, just like heaven, autobahn and of course God only knows) plus The Chain, which is objectively definitely Fleetwood Mac's best song, IMO.

[PolishStevieFan]

Not so great list but that's good they recognized one of the best songs from FM.

[mottabam]

Originally Posted by PolishStevieFan

Not so great list but that's good they recognized one of the best songs from FM.

I agree, The Chain live literally gives me chills, I just love it. It is one of my favorite songs. I could watch the Dance version over and over again, simply great.

[michelej1]

osted: Thursday, June 16, 2016 12:00 am
BY LAUREN CARTER FOR THE SUN CHRONICLE


CARTER: Messy moments make a masterpiece

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/vip/o...ba40764ff.html

I recently subscribed to the Tidal music service, which has given me access to virtually every song and album in existence.

Naturally, I started diving deep into Fleetwood Mac's collection (if you don't know about my obsession with the Mac, that's for another column altogether) and found the "Rumours" super deluxe edition, which includes loads of demos, out-takes and rough cuts recorded during the making of the album.

I've listened to "Rumours" dozens of times, but I've never heard the early versions of songs that, in my mind, are the definition of pop/rock perfection, and getting a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of those tracks from rough ideas to polished gems was illuminating to say the least. I couldn't help but see a parallel between the process of recording music and the process of living life.

Very often when it comes to any type of achievement, we see the finished product, the best-selling album, the masterpiece. It's rare to see the process it took to get there, the early sessions and experiments and songs that were scrapped and songs that became other songs and songs that sound nothing like how they started out.

We're quick to celebrate success, and rightfully so, but we seldom recognize the value or necessity of the toil and struggle that led up to it.

I've experienced what felt like pretty big setbacks and failures in my life. Situations that didn't go the way I planned, times when I didn't achieve what I wanted, times when I lost in some respect. As painful as those moments were, when I looked back months or years later, those perceived setbacks and failures were actually the very things that set me up for future success down the road. So many accomplishments in my life literally would not have been possible without first experiencing what felt like disasters or detours that were taking me off course but were actually bringing me exactly where I needed to be. Rough cuts and out-takes, if you will.

One of the standout moments on the "Rumours" special edition, and the moment when I really understood that recording an album is a process akin to living life, was when I heard the two songs that ultimately became the group's iconic hit "The Chain."

There's the Stevie Nicks demo by the same name that included the chorus "and if you don't love me now, you will never love me again/I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain." And then there's the second half of a bluesy Christine McVie track called "Keep Me There," which becomes the hard-driving finale of "The Chain."

The two original songs sound nothing like each other. They were written by two different artists. But elements of both songs were combined while the remainder of each song was scrapped to create one of the group's most instantly recognizable hits, the song that's opened virtually every show since 1977.

Did any of them foresee that result when they started out? I doubt it. Was the process of blending those two distinctly different songs into one chaotic and frustrating? I'm guessing it was. But the end product was something so beautiful and perfect that you'd never know the messy route it took to get there.

If you stopped and listened to "Rumours"- or any great album, for that matter - in the middle of the recording process, you might have been unimpressed. But you also would have missed the point. Each moment in the process was not an end in itself, it was a step leading to something greater - and it was precisely by working through the rough, imperfect, messy moments and improving upon them with each new take that the masterpiece was revealed.
Lauren Carter can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter

[michelej1]

From a Ringer article on Nicole Byer by Alison P. Davis

https://theringer.com/nicole-byer-is...fd8#.n6m6nbacl

[The Chain ... has never invoked those kinds of feelings in me]

Enter, on cue, Byer, a late twentysomething woman who is probably as used to hearing that as I am. She is dressed like an adult-teen — polka dot tunic, black leggings and a jean jacket — and bounces in the doorway for a moment before making her way over. “We’re gonna need to take some money out!” she booms, unfazed by our underrepresented status in the bar, or by the woman currently dry-humping the floor to a Fleetwood Mac song.

“I’ve always been sort of dirty. Even when I was little,” she shouts over the dulcet tones of “The Chain.”