DISCUSSION: Christine's songs from Mirage

[StephenC]

Christine's songs are usually very strong, but the production on Love In Store and Only Over you are bland. Both needed to be beefed up.

Hold Me is a great song.

I was actually thinking about Wish You Were Here the other day. Again, the production let's it down. Can you imagine how great it would have sounded with an orchestra accompanying the band?

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by StephenC

I was actually thinking about Wish You Were Here the other day. Again, the production let's it down. Can you imagine how great it would have sounded with an orchestra accompanying the band?

I have a theory about this song, which doesn't sound like anything else on Mirage. It's a sound that seemed to be very popular, which consisted of a very dry, spare sound and very simple, unadorned, crisp instrumentation with prominent drums- not unlike albums released by Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, and, most notably, John Lennon around the same time. John Lennon's Double Fantasy kind of perfected that sonic template, especially on his greatest song ever- "Watching the Wheels." Other artists, namely Elton John ("Empty Garden") and Queen ("Life Is Real") issued Lennon tributes that kind of paid homage to this particular sound. I think "Wish You Were Here" was Fleetwood Mac's own tribute to John Lennon. No, there is nothing particularly Lennon-specific about the lyrics, but that mournful sentiment of someone who has passed on is there along with the decidedly Double Fantasy-like vocal and instrumental arrangements.