5th Single from Rumours

[WatchChain]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

Another good question would be why a 4th single was not released from the White Album.
Warm Ways released in the UK did not chart
Over My Head hit #20
Rhiannon #11
Say You Love Me #11

The album hit #1 and was ripe for another single. The album was on a roll. I would have released Landslide or Monday Morning

I agree. Unlike the Rumours album, which exploded upon its release, The White Album built momentum slowly over a year. By the time Say You Love Me was released, the album was on fire. Releasing Monday Morning as a 4th single would have guaranteed a Top 10 hit.

I can only imagine that Warners had already focused its sights on Rumours.

[WalkAThinLine.]

Originally Posted by WatchChain

I agree. Unlike the Rumours album, which exploded upon its release, The White Album built momentum slowly over a year. By the time Say You Love Me was released, the album was on fire. Releasing Monday Morning as a 4th single would have guaranteed a Top 10 hit single.

I can only imagine that Warners had already focused its sights on Rumours.

"Say You Love Me" was still on the charts during the first week of November 1976, although just barely. "Go Your Own Way" was released in December 1976 and entered the charts on January 8, 1977. The band couldn't really fit another single within that timeframe unless they wanted two of their songs competing against one another, which could have oversaturated the radio with even more Fleetwood Mac songs. While people on The Ledge would view this as a wonderful development, it's entirely possible that the general public would experience Fleetwood Mac fatigue and grow to resent their overexposure.

[aleuzzi]

“Second Hand News” is an obvious choice. It’s just as good as the four singles. But at the time, a fifth single might have seemed like overkill. As it was, all of the non-singles from the album were already getting a lot of airplay on FM rock radio stations. I remember hearing every one of them (maybe with the possible exception was “Songbird”) at various times in the years following the album’s release. That was not the case for most of Tusk or Mirage or Tango.

As much as it underwhelms me, “Monday Morning” would have made a fine fifth single from the white album.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

“Second Hand News” is an obvious choice. It’s just as good as the four singles. But at the time, a fifth single might have seemed like overkill. As it was, all of the non-singles from the album were already getting a lot of airplay on FM rock radio stations. I remember hearing every one of them (maybe with the possible exception was “Songbird”) at various times in the years following the album’s release. That was not the case for most of Tusk or Mirage or Tango.

As much as it underwhelms me, “Monday Morning” would have made a fine fifth single from the white album.

I'm having a blond moment... what was the 4th single from White(hopefully not counting Warm Ways from England)?
Rhiannon
SYLM
Over My Head
?

[WalkAThinLine.]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

I'm having a blond moment... what was the 4th single from White(hopefully not counting Warm Ways from England)?
Rhiannon
SYLM
Over My Head
?

In the UK, the fourth single from the White album was "Say You Love Me". Only three were released in the US: "Over My Head", "Rhiannon", and "Say You Love Me".

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by WalkAThinLine.

In the UK, the fourth single from the White album was "Say You Love Me". Only three were released in the US: "Over My Head", "Rhiannon", and "Say You Love Me".

I only remembered the three being released.

So I was right.... I'm used to that.

[BLY]

The only song that got zero radio play from Rumours was Oh Daddy. Every other song I recall hearing on the radio. I Don’t Want to Know is the song that got me hooked….and I heard on a Philly radio station in 1977.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

I'm having a blond moment... what was the 4th single from White(hopefully not counting Warm Ways from England)?
Rhiannon
SYLM
Over My Head
?

I WAS counting Warm Ways. I thought it was released in UK and US.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

I WAS counting Warm Ways. I thought it was released in UK and US.

As much as I love THE QUEEN of FM, WW sounds so dated. I love playing keys along with it, but I require a Sugar Daddy infusion when I return from my WW coma.

[Villavic]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

As much as I love THE QUEEN of FM, WW sounds so dated. I love playing keys along with it, but I require a Sugar Daddy infusion when I return from my WW coma.

Please don't hate me, but I can't help but ask... after reading who is THE QUEEN of FM.. then... then... THE GODDESS is Stevie Nicks?

[David]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

As much as I love THE QUEEN of FM, WW sounds so dated. I love playing keys along with it, but I require a Sugar Daddy infusion when I return from my WW coma.

I was just playing WW on my Casio over the weekend, messing around with various tempos. A user created a Pianet patch for uploading to my Casio model, so I use that with a dose of tremolo. We do have that little bit of WW in rehearsal from early in 1975, but it seems the band may not have actually played it out live. It does sound dated, but it’s a well-crafted little ditty. With certain pop songs, you can tell immediately that they were composed by a piano player (walking bass lines, seconds and ninths, pretty little inverted chords, etc.), and WW is one of them. It’s a Christine specialty that comes straight out of the piano world to start her song on a dominant or subdominant rather than on the root, as she does here (and most famously starts her first verse vocal on the seventh). In WW, the first chord (aside from the intro) is dominant, which doesn’t resolve to the root for two bars. Lindsey on his guitar just wouldn’t do that (but watch someone find an exception right now).

I think composing on a guitar gives you a wider array of rhythms and textures, but a keyboard expands your options for chord structure and even modulation within the song. You can make unconventional choices and assimilate them into the song more smoothly than on a guitar.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

As much as I love THE QUEEN of FM, WW sounds so dated. I love playing keys along with it, but I require a Sugar Daddy infusion when I return from my WW coma.

In fairness, Prove Your Love and Come a Little Bit Closer sound just as dated. And ABBA’s Dancing Queen and Captain and Tenille’s Muskrat Love do, too. WW may reek of seventies easy listening, but it’s a clean, well-arranged song. It exists comfortably in the time and place where it emerged. But—

and I entirely agree with you—

Sugar Daddy blows it away.

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by WatchChain

I agree. Unlike the Rumours album, which exploded upon its release, The White Album built momentum slowly over a year. By the time Say You Love Me was released, the album was on fire. Releasing Monday Morning as a 4th single would have guaranteed a Top 10 hit.

I can only imagine that Warners had already focused its sights on Rumours.

Yes strange while an album is #1 to stop releasing singles from it. It was another time back then. Its almost like the album was such a success they called it a day and planned on going back to the studio.
Not sure this would happen today. But these would make great questions for the record company. Since the album was on the charts for a year maybe they feared Fleetwood Mac burn out from radio stations? There were no videos or MTV back then so just releasing a single would seem rather easy.
In any event, are there other bands with hugely successful albums that stopped releasing singles while the album and singles were hot?

[David]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

Since the album was on the charts for a year maybe they feared Fleetwood Mac burn out from radio stations?

I think that’s exactly what Warner Bros. was trying to avoid. Billboard ran a lot of business articles about Mac that year and the next and included a bunch of quotes from both label guys and radio guys. They were all trying to avoid “saturating the market.” The talk was that “Second Hand News” was going to be a fifth single. But in the seventies, I guess four singles from a single-disc studio album was just about the max. I don’t think even the Beatles ever released five singles. (Hotel California only had three official singles.) Plus, in Mac’s case — and I can vouch for this in Southern CA radio markets — all the singles were still in pretty heavy rotation for two years, so the suits may have felt that there was no business need to push a fifth, which would involve marketing and sales expense. An album that spends 31 weeks at no. 1 is sui generis — it’s raking in millions without having to spend any more money on it. So why spend? Why buy display ads? Why pay radio stations to play what they’re already playing? Why manufacture another 45?