"I hate you, now let’s make a great album." Fleetwood Mac was as dysfunctional as Congress when they released the album “Rumours” on February 4, 1977.
“Rumours” was an immediate hit. It sold 10 million copies in the first month. And spent 31 weeks at number one in the United States. It reached number one in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Canada, South Africa, Mars, Pluto, Saturn… It won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
The story behind the making of the album could be an eight-part soap opera on Netflix with an “adults-only” warning. You needed a spreadsheet to keep track of who was sleeping with whom; who was divorcing whom, and who was fighting with whom. The piles of cocaine didn’t help.
Stevie Nicks had just broken up with bandmember Lindsey Buckingham. Bandmember Christine McVie was in the middle of divorce from bassist John McVie. And, if that wasn’t enough, Mick Fleetwood’s marriage was under water after his wife had an affair with his best friend. He didn’t help things when he started an affair with Nicks.
Spouses and ex-spouses only would talk to each other about the music. The soap opera led to some emotional lyrics to become what Rolling Stone decided was the seventh greatest album of its Top 500 Albums of All Time.
The album returned to the top 10 in October 2020 thanks to a viral “Dreams” TikTok video.
Nicks said she wrote “Dreams” in just 10 minutes. It is Fleetwood Mac’s only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
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