Frozen Love Podcast

[BigAl84]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

As much as Stevie annoys me these days, her views on song authorship align with mine. No matter how skeletal the song might be, if those lyrics and melodies and basic chord changes are yours then it’s your song.

Lindsey never could understand this. He was a producer. Producers arrange and produce. They can make magnificent soundscapes out of even the most basic structures. That he snaked a co-writing credit for Christine’s “That’s How I Feel” (and from “Little Lies”) was pretty lame. But Christine didn’t seem to care. She was secure in her abilities as a songwriter and could he generous to a fault.

Stevie was/is protective of her songs. Good for her.

Lindsey often goes out of his way to explain how vital he was to crafting arrangements and producing those records. He certainly was, but his insistence on his role in the song’s transformation from demo to finished product—often at the expense of undermining the women’s songwriting autonomy—sometimes make him seem petty and jealous. It makes him look smaller than he is. It makes him look a bit desperate.

Hold up...
Christine was happy to explain in interviews that there were several songs that literally came from small "fragments" that she sent to Lindsey with full intention of having him take a pass a developing them into an actual song because she wasn't able to take the fragment any further. While none of us have heard these fragments - Christine definitely didn't say she had the chords and melody for "Feel About You" figured out and sent it to Lindsey for his flourishes. She openly talked about part of the magic of that project was the fact that she often had little fragments that he was able to develop further.

There's also a larger issue that involves the definition of melody. I'm not a music scholar, but I'm not confident that strumming some chords on a guitar or playing them on a piano is equivalent to crafting a melody. I looked this up and this is what I found:

The fundamental difference between melody and chord progression is how they are constructed. Melody is a sequence of single notes that follow each other. while a chord progression is made up of chords, which are groups of multiple notes played simultaneously. Melodies tend to be formed of single “melody lines” making them more fluid and adaptable. Chords on the other hand provide harmonic stability and fill out the sound.

Chord Progressions provide the foundation and support to give melodies context. The melody is designed to grab the listener’s attention while the chord progression works subtly in the background to enhance the song’s emotional depth.

Structurally, the melody often moves around, rising and falling in pitch while Chord progressions usually cycle predictably, offering stability and structure. This contrast between a fluent flowing melody and a steady chord progression represents the fundamentals of melodic composition and song structure.

I would argue that in a lot of instances, Stevie came to the table with some lyrics and a chord progression - but Lindsey figured out the actual melody. Dreams is a perfect example. I'm not saying Dreams isn't her song and that it should be credited as Lindsey's - they were a musical partnership in a lot of ways where he helped fill in each others gaps. There's always been a bit of an ego driven bias with Stevie when she talks about this exact dynamic and it's been inconsistent. Some days she's happy to admit that a lot of her Fleetwood Mac songs wouldn't be what they are without his help, other days/years it's "my demo was better, I don't want to work with Lindsey" etc etc. If you were to ask Stevie about Dreams, I don't think she would ever for a second say that Lindsey was responsible for developing the melody.

Undermining the women’s songwriting autonomy? There are countless interviews where Lindsey goes out of his way to say Stevie will come in with a beautiful lyric and then go into describing his contribution to the process. He even said in this podcast that he didn't feel she seeked his input on her lyrics and he didn't seek her input on his lyrics. They both knew and understand how they each contributed to each others work.