Lindsey albums ranked worst to best

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Lindsey Buckingham's contributions to Fleetwood Mac were often the quirkiest, frankly confrontational and most interesting. As his influence became ascendant, 1979's Tusk emerged as a double-album outpouring of musical guile and pure gumption.

Of course, Tusk "only" sold two million after 1977's more mainstream Rumours went 20-plus times platinum. This would play out in his solo career. For proof, go back to the two times Buckingham released solo albums the same year as his erstwhile Buckingham-Nicks duo partner Stevie Nicks – with far different results.

His 1981 solo debut Law and Order went to No. 32, while Bella Donna earned Nicks chart-topping four-times platinum accolades. His 2011 album Seeds We Sow stalled just outside the Top 40 while Nicks' In Your Dreams soared to No. 6.

As Buckingham's solo career unfolded in fits and starts, it became clear why: His albums still share so many of the same qualities as Tusk. He could be as musical and hook-tastic as any progenitor of California pop, yet often chose not to. He was dazzling, but also a little confrontational.

He could also go dark. On more than one occasion (1987's Tango in the Night, 2003's Say You Will), those absences were simply the result of Fleetwood Mac albums cannibalizing Buckingham's ongoing solo work. He ended up issuing music that included every classic-era member of Fleetwood Mac but Nicks under the far-less-lucrative banner of Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie in 2017 – even though Say You Will had been released with every classic-era member of Fleetwood Mac except McVie.

Just as mercurial in life, Buckingham quit once and then was fired a year later. Still, every element of his brilliant contributions to the band's classic era albums (which also include 1975's Fleetwood Mac and 1982's Mirage) can be found in these solo grooves. Here's a look back at Lindsey Buckingham's albums, ranked worst to best:


No. 9. 'Go Insane' (1984)
A triumph of modern production in its era, Go Insane can come off as gimmicky today – the work of a too-smart studio nerd trying out new things on his off day. Dig deeper, however, and a rich vein of sadness runs just below the album's sky-bright veneer. Buckingham uses that weird juxtaposition to create a remarkable, album-length sense of emotional tension. The title track couldn't quite crack the Top 20, while the album finished at No. 45 before departing to local record-store cutout bins. But Go Insane is worth another listen, if only for the closing "D.W. Suite," a darkly ambitious meditation on his recently deceased friend Dennis Wilson.

No. 8. 'Under the Skin (2006)
Buckingham went 14 years between solo albums, focusing first on Fleetwood Mac's late-'90s reunion and then helping to construct their 2003 album Say You Will. He returned with a low-key, mostly acoustic album that only rarely – as with the soaring "Down on Rodeo," which featured Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – rose above a whisper. Lean in, and a sadness over thwarted dreams permeates almost everything. It makes sense. After all, there was a reason for this long hiatus: He once again cannibalized a solo project in order to complete Fleetwood Mac's album instead.

No. 7. 'Lindsey Buckingham' (2021)
Unfortunately, Buckingham's focus on finishing and touring behind this album ended his long band-turning tenure in Fleetwood Mac. Also unfortunately, those same plans were then derailed by the pandemic. By the time Lindsey Buckingham finally arrived, he had barely gotten past a potentially career-ending throat problem. So, this LP felt important before its first-ever spin. Lindsey Buckingham lives up to that, echoing the frisky risk-taking of 1979's Tusk for a new age. "On the Wrong Side" seems to address his abrupt exit from Fleetwood Mac, but "I Don't Mind" is the highlight of the LP. He reanimates the quirky pitch experiments from 1987's "Big Love," but with a smitten softness more reminiscent of 1982's "Book of Love."

No. 6. 'Law and Order' (1981)
This album also mirrored the broad musical complexity of Fleetwood Mac's most recent double album Tusk. But it took things a bit further, as Buckingham blended pre-war songs into his signature style, like-minded originals and a batch of '50s- and '60s-inspired rock and pop. Perhaps only Buckingham, with his patented sense of wild-hair studio modernity, could hold all of that together. He also scored an early Top 10 solo Billboard single with "Trouble," which included a brief loop of Mick Fleetwood's drumming. Even then, a rugged sense of individuality remained: All additional fills and cymbal crashes were completed by Buckingham, who elsewhere ended up handling almost all of the album's instrumentation.

No. 5. 'Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie' (2017)
Much is typically made of the link (musical and otherwise) between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Yet Fleetwood Mac recordings prominently featuring Buckingham and Christine McVie – "World Turning," "Don't Stop," "Think About Me," "Hold Me" and a trio of co-written songs from Tango in the Night, including "Mystified" – have provided plenty of musical sparks since their careers first intersected in the mid-'70s. Same here, on a flinty album that should have been released under the Fleetwood Mac banner. Buckingham's songs tend to be the best of the lot, but it's fascinating how this collaboration brings out so much darkness in McVie.

No. 4. 'Seeds We Sow' (2011)
You were somehow expecting Lindsey Buckingham, the old rebel, to soften into middle-aged acceptance? This wasn't that record, which steadfastly refused to trade true emotion for easy sentiment. Seeds We Sow is as hard-eyed as it is musically ambitious – and that makes perfect sense. In a move that belied the era, Buckingham's best-known classic-era music never settled for cheap thrills, quick answers — or something so obvious and easy as nihilism. Seeds We Sow showed that it still didn't.

No. 3. 'Gift of Screws' (2008)
A long-gestating project, Gift of Screws began life in the '90s, fed a few songs into Fleetwood Mac's Say You Will and then finally emerged later in the same decade as a reworked solo album. It happened only because Buckingham finally asked for space to complete and release Under the Skin and Gift of Screws. They became quite complimentary, as the first album's acoustic stillness set the stage for this project's plugged-in vibe. Buckingham isn't in search of catharsis here – though "The Right Place to Fade" seems to directly reference the madness of Fleetwood Mac – so much as his most familiar persona: the oddball rock guy. Nevertheless, Gift of Screws remains delightfully accessible and emerged as the first Buckingham solo album to crack the Top 50 since 1984's Go Insane.

No. 2. 'Buckingham Nicks' (1973)
This fledgling duo moved to Los Angeles boasting a newly signed deal with Polydor. But the resulting self-titled debut went nowhere, leaving a desperate Stevie Nicks to take a waitress job to pay the rent. She said she was mere weeks away from returning to Phoenix when Mick Fleetwood made a fateful call. Buckingham and Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, and then Buckingham Nicks – despite its template-forging mix of soaring California pop-rock ("Crying in the Night," "Without a Leg to Stand On"), edgy asides ("Don't Let Me Down Again," "Long Distance Winner"), picker's showcases ("Stephanie") and weird musical side roads ("Frozen Love") – promptly went out of print. They'd later return to "Crystal" for the first LP with Fleetwood Mac. The band was transformed.

No. 1. 'Out of the Cradle' (1992)
For some reason, Lindsey Buckingham's initial solo project after a very public initial breakup with Fleetwood Mac didn't do much on the album charts, and produced no Hot 100 singles. Maybe fans had grown tired of his experimentalism outside of the main group. Maybe they were still angry about his departure. But, as it would time and again, that split led directly to the broad creative rebirth heard on Out of the Cradle. For the first time, Buckingham let himself inhabit the entire musical space he'd already created as the pop-genius sonic architect of Fleetwood Mac's platinum era. He held nothing back here, either in terms of the songs their projects usually pilfered away or the emotions he'd been keeping in check. Sure, it's the album he should have made from the first. But Out of the Cradle was worth the wait.


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