''Rumours'' is the eleventh studio album by British-American
rock band
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. Fleetwood Mac were founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, before bassist John McVie joined the line-up for their epo ...
, released on 4 February 1977 by
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...
. Largely recorded in California in 1976, it was produced by the band with
Ken Caillat
Kenneth Douglas Caillat ( ) is an American record producer. He is best known for engineering the Fleetwood Mac albums '' Rumours'', ''Tusk'', ''Mirage'', ''Live'', and '' The Chain Box Set''.
Life and career
Caillat was the president of 5.1 Ent ...
and
Richard Dashut. The recording sessions took place in the aftermath of several relationship
breakups among its members in addition to heavy drug use, both of which shaped the album's direction.
Recorded with the intention of making "a
pop album" that would expand on the commercial success of their self-titled
1975 album, the music of ''Rumours'' is characterized by a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation,
accented
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
rhythms, guitars and keyboards, while its lyrics concern personal and often troubled relationships. Its release was postponed by delays in the
mixing process. Following the album's release, Fleetwood Mac undertook worldwide concert tours. ''Rumours'' became the band's first number-one album on the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
and also topped the US
''Billboard'' 200. The songs "
Go Your Own Way
"Go Your Own Way" is a song by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac from their eleventh studio album, '' Rumours'' (1977). The song was released as the album's first single in December 1976 on both sides of the Atlantic. Written and sung ...
", "
Dreams
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...
", "
Don't Stop", and "
You Make Loving Fun
"You Make Loving Fun" is a song written and sung by Christine McVie of British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac. The song was released as the fourth and final 45 rpm single from the band's 1977 album '' Rumours''. "You Make Loving Fun" was the a ...
" were released as
singles
Singles are people not in a committed relationship.
Singles may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''Singles'' (miniseries), a 1984 Australian television series
* ''Singles'' (1992 film), written and directed by Cameron Crowe
* ''Singles'' ...
, all of which reached the US top 10, with "Dreams" reaching number one.
''Rumours'' was an instant commercial success, selling over 10 million copies worldwide within just a month of its release. It garnered widespread acclaim from critics, with praise centred on its production quality and
harmonies
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
, which frequently relied on the interplay among three vocalists and has inspired the work of musical acts in different genres. It won
Album of the Year at the
1977 Grammy Awards. It has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the
best-selling albums of all time. It has received
Diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
certifications in several countries, including the UK, Canada, and Australia, and has been certified
20× Platinum in the US.
Often considered Fleetwood Mac's
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
, ''Rumours'' has frequently been cited as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2004, ''Rumours'' was
remastered
Remaster refers to changing the quality of the sound or of the image, or both, of previously created recordings, either audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic. The terms digital remastering and digitally remastered are also used.
Mastering
A ...
and reissued with the addition of "
Silver Springs", which had been excluded from the original, and a bonus CD of
outtake
An outtake is a portion of a work (usually a film or music recording) that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and D ...
s from the recording sessions. In 2003, it was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame
The Grammy Hall of Fame is a hall of fame to honor musical recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance. Inductees are selected annually by a special member committee of eminent and knowledgeable professionals from all branches of ...
. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservati ...
, being deemed "culturally, historically, or artistically significant" by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
. In 2020, ''Rumours'' was rated the seventh-greatest album of all time in ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
''s list of the "
500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Background
In July 1975, Fleetwood Mac's
eponymous tenth album was released to great commercial success, reaching No. 1
in the U.S. in 1976. The record's biggest hit single, "
Rhiannon
Rhiannon is a major figure in the Mabinogi, the medieval Welsh story collection. She appears mainly in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and again in the Third Branch. She is a strong-minded Otherworld woman, who chooses Pwyll, prince of Dyfe ...
", gave the band extensive radio exposure. At the time, Fleetwood Mac's line-up consisted of guitarist and vocalist
Lindsey Buckingham
Lindsey Adams Buckingham (born October 3, 1949) is an American musician and record producer, best known as the lead guitarist and male lead vocalist of the band Fleetwood Mac from 1975 to 1987 and 1997 to 2018. In addition to his tenure with Fl ...
, drummer
Mick Fleetwood
Michael John Kells Fleetwood (born 24 June 1947) is a British musician, songwriter and occasional actor. He is best known as the drummer, co-founder, and leader of the rock band Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood, whose surname was merged with that of th ...
, keyboard player and vocalist
Christine McVie
Christine Anne McVie (; née Perfect; 12 July 1943 – 30 November 2022) was an English musician and songwriter. She was best known as keyboardist and one of the vocalists of the band Fleetwood Mac.
McVie was a member of several bands, nota ...
, bass guitarist
John McVie
John Graham McVie (born 26 November 1945) is a British bass guitarist. He is best known as a member of the rock bands John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers from 1964 to 1967 and Fleetwood Mac since 1967. His surname, combined with that of Mick Fle ...
, and vocalist
Stevie Nicks
Stephanie Lynn Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, and producer known for her work with the band Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.
After starting her career as a duo with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, releasi ...
. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced, ending eight years of marriage.
The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters.
Buckingham and Nicks—who had joined the band before 1975's ''Fleetwood Mac'' after guitarist
Bob Welch had left—were having an on/off relationship that led them to fight often. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. Fleetwood faced domestic problems of his own after discovering that his wife
Jenny
Jenny may refer to:
* Jenny (given name), a popular feminine name and list of real and fictional people
* Jenny (surname), a family name
Animals
* Jenny (donkey), a female donkey
* Jenny (gorilla), the oldest gorilla in captivity at the time of ...
, mother of his two children, was having an affair with his best friend.
Press intrusions into the band members' lives led to inaccurate stories. Christine McVie was reported to have been in the hospital with a serious illness, while Buckingham and Nicks were declared the parents of Fleetwood's daughter Lucy after being photographed with her. The press also wrote about a rumoured return of original Fleetwood Mac members
Peter Green,
Danny Kirwan
Daniel David Kirwan (13 May 1950 – 8 June 2018) was a British musician whose greatest success came with his role as guitarist, singer and songwriter with the blues rock band Fleetwood Mac between 1968 and 1972. He released three albums as a s ...
, and
Jeremy Spencer
Jeremy Cedric Spencer (born 4 July 1948) is a British musician, best known for playing slide guitar and piano in the original line-up of the rock band Fleetwood Mac. A member since Fleetwood Mac's inception in July 1967, he remained with th ...
for a 10th anniversary tour.
Despite false reports, the band did not change its lineup, although its members had no time to come to terms with the separations before recording for a new album began.
[ Fleetwood has noted the "tremendous emotional sacrifices" made by everyone just to attend studio work.] In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac crafted some new tracks in Florida. Founding members Fleetwood and John McVie chose to dispense with the services of their previous producer, Keith Olsen
Keith Alan Olsen (May 12, 1945 – March 9, 2020) was an American record producer and sound engineer, who worked with Magnum, Rick Springfield, Fleetwood Mac, Ozzy Osbourne, the Grateful Dead, Whitesnake, Pat Benatar, Heart, Santana, Saga, ...
, because he favoured a lower emphasis on the rhythm section. The duo formed a company called Seedy Management to represent the band's interests.
Recording
In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant
The Record Plant is a recording studio established in New York City in 1968 and currently operating in Los Angeles, California. Known for innovations in the recording artists' workspace, it has produced highly influential albums, including Blon ...
in Sausalito, California
Sausalito (Spanish language, Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, California, Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, California ...
, with hired engineers
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the ...
Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. Production duties were shared by the three parties, while the more technically adept Caillat was responsible for most of the engineering; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios was a recording studio founded in San Francisco in 1969 by recording engineer and studio owner Wally Heider. Between 1969 and 1980, numerous notable artists recorded at the studios, including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Je ...
in Los Angeles on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would eventually use their facilities. The set-up in Sausalito included a number of small recording rooms in a large, windowless, wooden building. Most band members complained about the studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Fleetwood did not allow any moves. Christine McVie and Nicks decided to live in two condominiums near the city's harbour, while the male contingent stayed at the studio's lodge in the adjacent hills. Recording occurred in a room which included a 3M 24-track tape machine, a range of high-quality microphones, and an API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
mixing console
A mixing console or mixing desk is an electronic device for mixing audio signals, used in sound recording and reproduction and sound reinforcement systems. Inputs to the console include microphones, signals from electric or electronic inst ...
with 550A equalisers; the latter were used to control frequency differences or a track's timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
. Although Caillat was impressed with the set-up, he felt that the room lacked ambience because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing
Soundproofing is any means of impeding sound propagation. There are several basic approaches to reducing sound: increasing the distance between source and receiver, decoupling, using noise barriers to reflect or absorb the energy of the sound wav ...
.[
The record's ]working title
A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...
in Sausalito was ''Yesterday's Gone''.[ Buckingham took charge of the studio sessions to make "a pop album". According to Dashut, while Fleetwood and the McVies came from an improvisational blues-rock background, the guitarist understood "the craft of record making". During the formative stages of compositions, Buckingham and Christine McVie played guitar and piano together to create the album's basic structures. The latter was the only classically trained musician in Fleetwood Mac, but both shared a similar sense of musicality. When the band jammed, Fleetwood often played his drum kit outside the studio's partition screen to better gauge Caillat's and Dashut's reactions to the music's ]groove
Groove or Grooves may refer to:
Music
* Groove (music)
* Groove (drumming)
* The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s
* The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station
* Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station
...
.[ Baffles were placed around the drums and around John McVie, who played his bass guitar facing Fleetwood. Buckingham performed close to the rhythm section, while Christine McVie's keyboards were kept away from the drum kit. Caillat and Dashut spent about nine days working with a range of microphones and ]amplifiers
An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It may increase the power significantly, or its main effect may be to boost the v ...
to get a larger sound, before discovering they could adjust the sound effectively on the API mixing console.[
As the studio sessions progressed, the band members' new intimate relationships that formed after various separations started to have a negative effect on Fleetwood Mac.] The musicians did not meet or socialise after their daily work at the Record Plant. At the time, the hippie movement
The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.
Its origins may be traced to European social movements in the 19th and early 20th century such as B ...
still affected Sausalito's culture and drugs were readily available. Open-ended budgets enabled the band and the engineers to become self-indulgent; sleepless nights and the extensive use of cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...
marked much of the album's production.[ Chris Stone, one of the Record Plant's owners, indicated in 1997 that Fleetwood Mac brought "excess at its most excessive" by taking over the studio for long and extremely expensive sessions; he stated, "The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party till 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording".]
Nicks has suggested that Fleetwood Mac created the best music when in the worst shape,[ while, according to Buckingham, the tensions between band members informed the recording process and led to "the whole being more than the sum of the parts".][ The couple's work became "bittersweet" after their final split, although Buckingham still had a skill for taking Nicks' tracks and "making them beautiful". The ]vocal harmonies
Vocal harmony is a style of vocal music in which a consonant note or notes are simultaneously sung as a main melody in a predominantly homophonic texture. Vocal harmonies are used in many subgenres of European art music, including Classical chora ...
between the duo and Christine McVie worked well and were captured using the best microphones available.[ Nicks' lyrical focus allowed the instrumentals in the songs that she wrote to be looser and more abstract. According to Dashut, all the recordings captured "emotion and feeling without a middle man ... or tempering".][ John McVie tended to clash with Buckingham about the make-up of songs, but both admit to achieving good outcomes. Christine McVie's "Songbird", which Caillat felt needed a concert hall's ambience, was recorded during an all-night session at Zellerbach Auditorium in ]Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
, across San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
from Sausalito.
Following over two months in Sausalito, Fleetwood arranged a ten-day tour to give the band a break and get fan feedback. After the concerts, recording resumed at venues in Los Angeles,[ including Wally Heider Studios. Christine McVie and Nicks did not attend most of the sessions and took time off until they were needed to record any remaining vocals. The rest of Fleetwood Mac, with Caillat and Dashut, struggled to finalise the overdubbing and mixing of ''Rumours'' after the Sausalito tapes were damaged by repeated use during recording; the ]kick
A kick is a physical Strike (attack), strike using the leg, in unison usually with an area of the knee or lower using the foot, heel, tibia (shin), ball of the foot, blade of the foot, toes or knee (the latter is also known as a knee (strike), ...
and snare drum
The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used ...
audio tracks sounded "lifeless".[ A sell-out autumn tour of the US was cancelled to allow the completion of the album,][ whose scheduled release date of September 1976 was pushed back.] A specialist was hired to rectify the Sausalito tapes using a vari-speed oscillator. Through a pair of headphones which played the damaged tapes in his left ear and the safety master recordings in his right, he converged their respective speeds aided by the timings provided by the snare and hi-hat audio tracks.[ Fleetwood Mac and their co-producers wanted a "no-filler" final product, in which every track seemed a potential single. After the final mastering stage and hearing the songs back-to-back, the band members sensed they had recorded something "pretty powerful".
]
Promotion and release
In autumn 1976, while still recording, Fleetwood Mac showcased tracks from ''Rumours'' at the Universal Amphitheatre
Universal Amphitheatre (later known as Gibson Amphitheatre) was an indoor amphitheatre located in Los Angeles, California within Universal City, California, Universal City. It was built as an outdoor venue, opening in the summer of 1972 with a p ...
in Los Angeles.[ John McVie suggested the album title to the band because he felt the members were writing "journals and diaries" about each other through music.][ Warner Bros. confirmed the release details to the press in December and chose "Go Your Own Way" as a December 1976 promotional single. The label's aggressive marketing of 1975's ''Fleetwood Mac'', in which links with dozens of FM and AM radio stations were formed across America, aided the promotion of ''Rumours''. At the time, the album's advance order of 800,000 copies was the largest in Warner Bros.' history.
''Rumours'' was released on 4 February 1977 in the US, and a week later in the UK.][ The front cover features a stylised shot of Fleetwood and Nicks dressed in her "Rhiannon" stage persona, while the back has a montage of band portraits; all the photographs were taken by Herbert Worthington.][ On 28 February 1977, after rehearsing at SIR Studios in Los Angeles, Fleetwood Mac started a seven-month-long promotional tour of America.] Nicks has noted that, after performing mostly ''Rumours'' songs during gigs, the band initially encountered poor receptions from fans who were not accustomed to the new material. A one-off March performance at a benefit concert for United States Senator
The United States Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives being the Lower house, lower chamber. Together they compose the national Bica ...
Birch Bayh
Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (; January 22, 1928 – March 14, 2019) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1963 to 1981. He was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the India ...
in Indiana was followed by a short European tour of the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Germany in April.[ Nigel Williamson of '']Uncut
Uncut may refer to:
* ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship
* ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997
* '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...
'' called Fleetwood Mac's performances "rock's greatest soap opera". "Dreams", released in March 1977, became the band's only number one on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 that June.[
]
Composition
Lyrics
Fleetwood Mac's main writers — Buckingham, Christine McVie and Nicks — worked individually on songs but sometimes shared lyrics with each other. "The Chain" is the only track on which all members, including Fleetwood and John McVie, collaborated. All songs on ''Rumours'' concern personal, often troubled relationships.[ According to Christine McVie, the fact that the lyricists were focusing on the various separations became apparent to the band only in hindsight.] "You Make Loving Fun" is about her boyfriend, Fleetwood Mac's lighting director, whom she dated after splitting from John.[ Nicks' "Dreams" details a breakup and has a hopeful message, while Buckingham's similar effort in "Go Your Own Way" is more pessimistic. After a short fling with a New England woman, he was inspired to write "Never Going Back Again", a song about the illusion of thinking that sadness will never occur again once content with life. The lines "Been down one time/Been down two times" refer to the lyricist's efforts when persuading the woman to give him a chance.][
"Don't Stop", written by Christine McVie, is a song about optimism. She noted that Buckingham helped her craft the verses because their personal sensibilities overlapped.][ McVie's next track, "Songbird", features more introspective lyrics about "nobody and everybody" in the form of "a little prayer". "Oh Daddy", the last McVie song on the album, was written about Fleetwood and his wife ]Jenny Boyd
Helen Mary "Jenny" Boyd (born 8 November 1947) is an English former model, the younger sister of 1960s model and photographer Pattie Boyd (first wife of George Harrison). She quit her modelling career in the 1960s after discovering Transcende ...
, who had just got back together. The band's nickname for Fleetwood was "the Big Daddy".[ McVie commented that the writing is slightly sarcastic and focuses on the drummer's direction for Fleetwood Mac, which always turned out to be right. Nicks provided the final lines "And I can't walk away from you, baby/If I tried". Her own song "Gold Dust Woman" is inspired by Los Angeles and the hardship encountered in such a city.] After struggling with the rock lifestyle, Nicks became addicted to cocaine; the lyrics address her belief in "keeping going".
Music
Featuring a soft rock
Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. S ...
and pop rock
Pop rock (also typeset as pop/rock) is a fusion genre with an emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude than rock music. Originating in the late 1950s as an alternative to normal rock and roll, earl ...
sound, ''Rumours'' is built around a mix of acoustic and electric instrumentation. Buckingham's guitar work and Christine McVie's use of Fender Rhodes piano
The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, t ...
or Hammond B-3 organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated ...
are present on all but two tracks. The record often includes stressed drum sounds and distinctive percussion such as congas and maraca
A maraca (), sometimes called shaker or chac-chac, is a rattle which appears in many genres of Caribbean and Latin music. It is shaken by a handle and usually played as part of a pair.
Maracas (from Guaraní ), also known as tamaracas, were ...
s. It opens with "Second Hand News", originally an acoustic demo titled "Strummer". After hearing Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'
"Jive Talkin" is a song by the Bee Gees, released as a single in May 1975 by RSO Records. This was the lead single from the album ''Main Course'' (as well as a song on the 1977 ''Saturday Night Fever'' soundtrack) and hit number one on the ''Bi ...
", Buckingham and co-producer Dashut built up the song with four audio tracks of electric guitar and the use of chair percussion to evoke Celtic rock
Celtic rock is a genre of folk rock, as well as a form of Celtic fusion which incorporates Celtic music, instrumentation and themes into a rock music context. It has been extremely prolific since the early 1970s and can be seen as a key foundatio ...
. "Dreams" includes "ethereal spaces" and a recurring two note
Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to:
Music and entertainment
* Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music
* ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...
pattern on the bass guitar.[ Nicks wrote the song in an afternoon and led the vocals, while the band played around her. The third track on ''Rumours'', "Never Going Back Again", began as "Brushes", a simple acoustic guitar tune played by Buckingham, with snare rolls by Fleetwood using ]brushes
A brush is a common tool with bristles, wire or other filaments. It generally consists of a handle or block to which filaments are affixed in either a parallel or perpendicular orientation, depending on the way the brush is to be gripped durin ...
; the band added vocals and further instrumental audio tracks to make it more layered. Inspired by triple step dancing patterns, "Don't Stop" includes both conventional acoustic and tack piano
A tack piano (also known as a harpsipiano, jangle piano, and junk piano) is an altered version of an ordinary piano, in which objects such as thumbtacks or nails are placed on the felt-padded hammers of the instrument at the point where the ha ...
. In the latter instrument, nails are placed on the points where the hammers hit the strings, producing a more percussive sound. "Go Your Own Way" is more guitar-oriented and has a four-to-the-floor
Four-on-the-floor (or four-to-the-floor) is a rhythm pattern used primarily in dance genres such as disco and electronic dance music. It is a steady, uniformly accented beat in time in which the bass drum is hit on every beat (1, 2, 3, 4)." ...
dance beat influenced by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically d ...
' "Street Fighting Man
"Street Fighting Man" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, written by the songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Considered one of the band's most popular and most controversial songs, it features Indian instrume ...
". The album's pace slows down with "Songbird", conceived solely by Christine McVie using a nine-foot Steinway
Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan by German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to the opening of a ...
piano.[
Side two of ''Rumours'' begins with "The Chain", one of the record's most complicated compositions. A Christine McVie demo, "Keep Me There",][ and a Nicks song were re-cut in the studio and were heavily edited to form parts of the track. The whole of the band crafted the rest using an approach akin to creating a ]film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...
; John McVie provided a prominent solo using a fretless
A fretless guitar is a guitar with a fingerboard without frets, typically a standard instrument that has had the frets removed, though some custom-built and commercial fretless guitars are occasionally made.
The classic fretless guitar was fir ...
bass guitar, which marked a speeding up in tempo and the start of the song's final third. Inspired by R&B, "You Make Loving Fun" has a simpler composition and features a clavinet
The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...
, a special type of keyboard instrument, while the rhythm section plays interlocking notes and beats. The ninth track on ''Rumours'', "I Don't Want to Know", makes use of a twelve string guitar
A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...
and harmonising vocals. Influenced by the music of Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...
, Buckingham and Nicks created it in 1974 before they were in Fleetwood Mac. "Oh Daddy" was crafted spontaneously and includes improvised bass guitar patterns from John McVie and keyboard blips from Christine McVie. The album ends with "Gold Dust Woman", a song inspired by free jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ...
, which has music from a harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
, a Fender Stratocaster
The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed from 1952 into 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuousl ...
guitar, and a dobro
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally ...
, an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones.[
]
Critical reception
''Rumours'' has been acclaimed by music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...
since its release. Robert Christgau, reviewing in ''The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'', described it as "more consistent and more eccentric" than its predecessor. He added that it "jumps right out of the speakers at you". ''Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' magazine's John Swenson believed the interplay among the three vocalists was one of the album's most pleasing elements; he stated, "Despite the interminable delay in finishing the record, ''Rumours'' proves that the success of ''Fleetwood Mac'' was no fluke." In a review for ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', John Rockwell
John Sargent Rockwell (born September 16, 1940) is an American music critic, dance critic and arts administrator. According to '' Grove Music Online'', "Rockwell brings two signal attributes to his critical work: a genuine admiration for all ...
said the album is "a delightful disk, and one hopes the public thinks so, too", while Dave Marsh of the ''St. Petersburg Times
The ''Tampa Bay Times'', previously named the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It has won fourteen Pulitzer Prizes since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single ...
'' claimed the songs are "as grandly glossy as anything right now". Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn (born September 25, 1939) is an American pop music critic, author, and radio host. As critic and music editor at the ''Los Angeles Times'' from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles appeared in publications around the wor ...
was less receptive and called ''Rumours'' a "frustratingly uneven" record in his review for the ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', while Juan Rodriguez of ''The Gazette
The Gazette (stylized as the GazettE), formerly known as , is a Japanese visual kei Rock music, rock band, formed in Kanagawa Prefecture, Kanagawa in early 2002.''Shoxx'' Vol 106 June 2007 pg 40-45 The band is currently signed to Sony Music Recor ...
'' suggested that, while the music is "crisper and clearer", Fleetwood Mac's ideas are "slightly more muddled". The album finished fourth in ''The Village Voice''s 1977 Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abs ...
critics' poll, which aggregated the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.
In a retrospective review, AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occ ...
gave ''Rumours'' five stars and noted that, regardless of the voyeuristic element, the record was "an unparalleled blockbuster" because of the music's quality; he concluded, "Each tune, each phrase regains its raw, immediate emotional power—which is why ''Rumours'' touched a nerve upon its 1977 release, and has since transcended its era to be one of the greatest, most compelling pop albums of all time."[ According to '']Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
''s Barry Walsh, Fleetwood Mac drew on romantic dysfunction and personal turmoil to create a timeless, five-star record, while Andy Gill of ''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' claimed it "represents, along with '' The Eagles Greatest Hits'', the high-water mark of America's Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism".[ In 2007, the ]BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
's Daryl Easlea labelled the sonic results as "near perfect", "like a thousand angels kissing you sweetly on the forehead",
'' wrote, "What distinguishes ''Rumours''—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss."
''Rumours'' was a huge commercial success and became Fleetwood Mac's second US number-one record, following the 1975 eponymous release.