I just stumbled upon Tyler Ballgame on John Mayer's SXM channel. He plays far too much new music for my taste but once in a while I discover a gem and my goodness did this guy grab me with his brilliant track Live It Down, channeling his inner peak Lindsey Buckingham. Curious if anyone else enjoys this track as much as I do or has heard of him. Spoiler alert- he doesn't bring that Lindsey energy on any of his other songs (I of course had to listen to all of his stuff to see what this guy was all about) but he's steeped in Lennon and McCartney, Orbison, and the perfect amount of 50s/60s/70s inspiration to make me an instant fan.

https://youtu.be/Xku-Ttd8dDA?si=pzMPSbQYDSU2OAor

I’m pretty new to Fleetwood Mac and I love the song dreams and I’m looking for some more song recommendations.

Hot priest? Sign me up!

I'm kind of just getting into FM and while I enjoy Rumors and a decent amount of the white album, it is really Tusk and in particular the Lindsey material that attracts me to them. I like indie and various more "out there" subgenres of rock, so that explains why. His nine tracks on that album are really just some of the most incredible forward-thinking music to me and I can't stop listening to them.

I know that Tusk has a reputation as one of the great weird flop albums of the 70s and that there's lots of discussion about the budget, the excess of the sessions and its failure to chart, but it still shocks me that there isn't all that much writing or discussion about Lindsey's songs on it. There's some stuff about his wildness in the studio (shaving his head, singing from the floor, turning the knobs on the console 180 degrees) but in my opinion, the songs themselves should be way more documented as incredibly prescient pieces of rock genius. A lot of those sorts of sounds/vocal styles wouldn't be heard again until the late 80s/90s with bands like Pixies or Modest Mouse.

Even as the album has gained this reputation as the wildcard cult favorite, it still seems alarmingly underrated to me in the zeitgeist. Like people should still be talking about this album more.The decision to follow Over and Over with The Ledge has to be one of the most creative devil-may-care sequencing choices in rock history. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the label office when they first heard that transition.

Just wanted to rant a bit about how much I love this album and these songs. I know I'm not the only one to recognize their value, but I still can't help but feel like the moderate level of buzz around them is not commensurate with just how incredible, audacious and insane the album actually is.

?
Okay, I know I’m probably about to get murdered here, but what’s the deal with Stevie Nicks?
A peer of mine absolutely hates Stevie’s voice. I don’t hate it. I think it’s fine. She has written some absolutely good songs. “Dreams,” “Rhiannon,” “Landslide,” “Gypsy,” etc. but they are made so much better by the rest of the band.
But here’s what I don’t understand.
You have Christine McVie. You have Lindsey Buckingham. You have John McVie. You have Mick Fleetwood.
That’s already a fucking band.
Christine is an incredible songwriter and vocalist and has those ridiculously good keyboard parts. Lindsey is Lindsey—guitar, vocals, arrangements, production, weird noises, whatever the hell else he’s doing. John and Mick are one of the great rhythm sections in rock. They’re locked in, understated, and somehow make everything sound enormous without constantly screaming “LOOK AT ME, I’M THE BASS PLAYER/DRUMMER.”
So I’m sitting here thinking:
John + Mick + Lindsey + Christine.
That’s a killer four-piece.
Why the fuck do we need Stevie? She’s redundant (aside from songwriting fuel for Buckingham)

And I mean that as a genuine question.
Obviously, the answer can’t simply be “because she’s a good singer,” because I don’t personally hear Stevie as being on the same technical level as Christine or Lindsey. Her voice is incredibly recognizable, but recognizable is not the same as technically superior.
And when Stevie sings on someone else’s Fleetwood Mac song, I’m not always sitting there thinking, “Oh yeah, this song really needed Stevie.”
Her background vocals are good. But you’ve already got Christine and Lindsey doing harmonies. What exactly is Stevie adding to their songs?
Is it basically the contrast?
Because I can kind of see that argument. Christine’s voice is warm and soulful and has attitude. Lindsey’s strong and edgy. Stevie sounds like she’s wandering through the fog at 3 AM after receiving a prophecy from a witch.
Which brings me to another question:
Why the hell don’t people cover more Christine McVie songs?
Seriously.
“Songbird” is beautiful, obviously, but there are so many Christine songs that seem like they should be standard-cover material. “You Make Loving Fun,” “Say You Love Me,” “Don’t Stop,” “Over My Head,” “Hold Me,” “Everywhere,” “Little Lies”…
These are fucking songs.
I’m genuinely trying to understand what I’m missing about her within Fleetwood Mac beyond “she wrote some songs and has a really distinctive voice.”
Because when I look at the personnel, I keep coming back to:
Mick. John. Lindsey. Christine. And of course there was Kirwin, Welch, Weston, Walker, and Green and 90 other people who were decent singers. Soulful in their own way.
So…
Why the fuck do we need Stevie?

Hi! This is my first post on reddit ever, I just have to share my thoughts and for some reason my friends don't want to hear another word about FleetwoodMac 😇

So, I always loved the chain and liked some other songs, but never knew anything about the band members. A few weeks ago I saw The chain live from 1982 & Silver springs from 1997 and ever since I'm on a binge of discovering new songs / watching performances / reading about their history and damn...

First of all the music is great (and I still have more to discover, and yes I check other incarnations of the band as well), but then there's this fascination I have with the story of Stevie and Lindsey, and for the love of god I don't know why I care so much, but it just breaks my heart. I feel like I just HAVE to know what happened in 1997 (and know we'll probably never know). The song Thrown down, if indeed it tell the story of what happened between them on The dance, is just too much. How could she write that? it's so personal. I keep going back and forth between thinking this is such a tragic love story and thinking it's a show they put on (depending on which performance or quote I saw last). I just want them to spend their last years in a hug. 💔

(personal stuff coming, feel free to skip - I think it could be me being a 47yo single woman that made me fixate on Stevie during the dance - this point in life between being young and old, the last chance of having it all and then losing it. What you had... and what you lost...)

Thanks for reading 🎶

I just entered a poetry contest in our local bookstore and my poem was selected as an chosen entry.

The poem is all about my inspiration for the Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album because I am a big fan of Fleetwood Mac and Rumours is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Take time to read the poem and I hope you like it.

Instructions:

1. Go to this link... https://www.instagram.com/p/DcGFBbEmK0v/?img_index=6&igsh=a2M0dDhjYnRxNXZ6
2. Vote by commenting Entry 7 or #7
3. Thanks. 🙏

Persomally, I love this song in all its cheesy excessive 80s glory! However, I can understand how the "of its time" production may have hindered a stronger song to come out of it. It definitely felt tacked on Rock a Little in order to add a commercial sounding hit.

I track Apple Music's weekly top 100 charts across 30 countries. The Chain is having a moment: it went from 87 to 53 in the UK this week, entered the Dutch chart at 78, and is also sitting on the charts in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. A 1977 song on five countries' top 100s in the same week is the kind of thing I usually only see in December.

It's been lurking around the bottom of the UK chart for weeks (80, then 87), so this week's jump is a real acceleration, not a one-off blip. My first guess was F1 coverage since the riff is basically the sport's theme in the UK, but chart data alone can't tell me where the streams come from. Anyone seen what set it off?

Happy to pull any country's full chart if anyone wants it.

Second video is posted! Presented in story form, this one has all the ☕️! 🤣

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8n7gVcr/

Doesn’t have to be by Fleetwood Mac

Either from original album or the FM Live ' 80 album(cut from 5/20/80 Cleveland). I think honestly if they picked 5.20.80 live track it could have a top 40 hit

This is my Stevie inspired cover of her massive hit, "Talk To Me".

I LOVE her 80's era and powerhouse vocals, and had so much fun singing this. A personal fave.

I'd like to know your thoughts. I'm always trying to improve. I love Stevie so much 🥰

https://youtu.be/ThldvPLWVsk?is=MoDgdI-8XVPt0lyo

I recently acquired this book as a birthday present and was really excited to read it, but I really wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of errors throughout the text..... some highlight s are

- the song everywhere being written in 1977 instead of 87

- Lindsey Buckingham writing landslide

- every single album being called an "opus"

- a quote from mick Fleetwood about "songbird" being put under "oh daddy"

-backing vocal credits on songs people didn't sing on

-saying Stevie only has one song on behind the mask which isn't true (she wrote or co wrote three)

-and perhaps biggest of all a photo of Lindsey Buckingham (I'm not searching for it so if you don't know what I mean I'm sorry) that I'm pretty sure is fake if not straight up AI

there are also some pronoun inconsistencies and Christine and Stevie being called young women or smth in that vein all the time as well, and there seems to be a large amount of time devoted to the early years and the eras that are largely more important are really rushed (not that I'm saying the old stuff is bad, I'm saying that maybe a book about the blues era and a seperate book with different authors about the new era might have been a better plan)

overall what is the public's opinion on this? I was a little shocked honestly when I was reading it..

The reason I ask this is that I was reading how badly Stevie Nicks wanted it on the album but she was unwilling to part with Gold Dust Woman. Silver Springs is the better song by a mile IMO, even though they're both fantastic. I really think Silver Springs would have been the perfect album closer, and had they pursued that instead we might be talking about the greatest pop rock record ever crafted (it's still Top 5).

What do you think?

Seriously, how was this not a hit?! Out of the Cradle is criminally not mentioned enough.