9 Songs That Prove Fleetwood Mac Was a Top 5 Pop-Rock Band

I walk you through my favorite tracks from one of the biggest bands ever.

Does Fleetwood Mac’s name get mentioned enough in the pantheon of all-time great rock and pop groups?

I get that the vast majority of you probably know Rumours, or at least a handful of songs from it. But, like the Eagles with Hotel California or the B-52’s Cosmic Love, Fleetwood Mac have a far more nuanced, intriguing discography than their commercial apex might suggest. They started as a blues act, for goodness sake, and that was long before Buckingham or Nicks walked through a studio door to join them.

Hit after hit, era after era, they really should be talked about for what they are: one of the most important acts in music history, on either side of the Atlantic. This post is my small attempt to turn the conversational tides in that direction by putting some overdue respect on their name.

From Peter Green’s chaotic tenure as the band’s leader to the even more chaotic times that followed in the wake of Rumours, these are my picks for the songs that prove Fleetwood Mac is somehow, after all this time, likely underrated. They make their case with examples spanning songwriting range, emotional depth, sonic ambition, and cultural staying power.

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In chronological order, let’s go:

1. “Oh Well (Part 1)” (1969)

So unconvinced of its commercial viability, Peter Green, who composed “Oh Well,” thought the song would flop after it was chosen by the label as the lead single for Then Play On. He even lobbied to have Part 1 and Part 2 swap sides, but the release went ahead as planned and, in an amusing twist of fate, nearly hit No. 1 in the UK, staying on the singles chart for 16 weeks. It also became the band’s first-ever entry on the American Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 55.

Green had recorded the whole thing in four takes in London earlier that summer, building the song out of an eight-bar blues riff on a dobro-style resonator guitar that still slices through your speakers like an absolute buzzsaw. That chugging, brawny riff is so distinctive, I’ve heard it inspired several Led Zeppelin songs, including the following year’s “Black Dog.” The verses are almost perfunctory, coming out of nowhere and hanging in the air, waiting, like us, for the groove to return and explode into a rock shuffle.

Though he’s not talked about as much these days, Green earned a ton of respect from other guitarists in his brief stint with Fleetwood Mac. B.B. King, not someone who scattered praise lightly, once said of Green: “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”

2. “Rhiannon” (1975)

“Rihannon” began life in 1974, months before singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks and then-partner Lindsey Buckingham had joined the group. Nicks was inspired to write the song after reading what she called “a stupid little paperback [called] Triad.” The novel, written by Mary Bartlet Leader, tells the story of a girl who becomes possessed by the eponymous spirit. “I read the book, but I was so taken with that name that I thought: ‘I’ve got to write something about this,’” she explained.

At the time, Nick and Buckingham were in the process of writing material that was supposed to be a follow-up to their now-revered (but, on its initial release, mostly ignored) debut LP, Buckingham Nicks. Unbeknownst to the duo, their producer, Keith Olsen, had played a few of their songs to drummer Mick Fleetwood, who was impressed enough to ultimately take them both on as permanent members. The rest, as they say, is history.

What makes this track so special is how it lives as a self-contained piece of mythology. You don’t need to know of the obscure literary or Welsh cultural references to feel it deep in your soul. You only need to give yourself over to Nicks’s searing performance, one that she’d stretch to the breaking point live, sometimes spinning it into an eight or 10-minute epic. Rock and oldies radio still can’t get enough of it.

3. “Landslide” (1975)

A timeless ballad about processing and finding the strength to push through struggle, Nicks wrote “Landslide” at a time when she was considering quitting music completely. She and Buckingham had been dropped by Polydor, money was running out, and the motivation to keep plugging away was seriously waning. As you might expect from material that comes from such a personal reckoning, it’s beautifully, painfully restrained. There’s no production layer sitting between the listener and Nicks’s words. She sounds so close that you think you can reach out and tell her it’s going to be okay.

Of course, her vocal on “Landslide” is outstanding, one of her very best, but the more underrated aspect of this song is Buckingham’s fingerpicking style. Deeply influenced by Chet Atkins, it gives the instrumental an intimacy that almost no other recording from that era even attempted. No drums. Barely anything in the mix at all, save for the duo’s contributions. The nakedness of the composition has never landed quite the same way in other artists’ hands, though the Chicks did give it a game try in the mid-2000s.

Because it was never released as a proper single, “Landslide” spent decades as more of a concert staple than anything else, building its audience one stunning in-person moment at a time. A later version, recorded during a concert in Los Angeles, eventually made the Hot 100 when I was a kid in the mid-1990s. As the years march on, the line about time making bold and old, about seasons changing and standing at the precipice, has evolved from metaphor to front-line reporting.

4. “Go Your Own Way” (1977)

Despite its reputation as one of several angst-driven moments on Rumours, there’s a lot going on under the hood musically on “Go Your Own Way.”

Buckingham was reportedly inspired by the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” which you can hear in Fleetwood’s drum groove, though he adds more syncopation to give it added flavor. His initial demo was so intense, producer Ken Caillat wondered if they’d even be able to do anything with it. It was all rhythmic tension and not much else. But, after tuning his guitar down before recording and streamlining other, busier parts of the arrangements (like John McVie’s bass contribution), they ended up crafting an all-time rock classic.

One of several reasons for that is the track's restlessness. It powers every element you hear, including those chorus harmonies that manage to be bright and full of rage simultaneously. When Nicks recorded her vocal parts, she objected to several of Buckingham’s lyrical flourishes, but the guitarist and her ex-lover declined to change them. The fact that she sang them anyway, on a track that became as popular as it did, is part and parcel with the band’s delightfully messy creative process. If they’d had copasetic, easy relationships, I don’t think they would’ve made music nearly as compelling as they did. I don’t wish that on them, either, but I can’t see any alternative.

5. “Dreams” (1977)

One of rock’s most enduring bops, “Dreams,” started as a lark. Nicks wrote it in 10 minutes with a drum loop and a Rhodes piano pattern that came tumbling out of her. “Right away, I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat, because that made it a little unusual for me,” she said years later. When she presented the song to the band, they were less than enthused. Christine McVie, who was in the middle of separating from John while the ensemble was recording Rumours, thought it was simple to the point of being boring.

But, at Nicks’s insistence, a basic demo track was recorded the next day, with Nicks playing the piano and singing. Those elements made it onto the final cut of “Dreams” with minimal editing, even after she recorded nearly a dozen takes of the lead vocal. The rest of the band’s contributions, including Buckingham’s addition of three separate sections that play up the core three chords, as well as the three-part harmonies, were added later. Of all the singles off Rumors (all four of which cracked the Top 10 of the Hot 100), “Dreams” was their only No. 1, peaking in June 1977.

It’s all quite impressive and mystical—the stuff rock and roll legend is made of—but it’s not the whole story, either. This track has also benefited from several social media resurgences, most notably Nathan Apodaca’s viral TikTok video from 2020. On top of inviting a slew of parodies, including from Mick Fleetwood himself, the moment catapulted the song back into the mainstream conversation, re-entering the Hot 100 at No. 21, more than 40 years after its initial release. On the one hand, it’s the nostalgia industrial complex working its magic, but I think the infatuation with the song runs deeper than that.

Even if you had no concept of Fleetwood Mac or Rumours prior to that viral moment, it’s an easy track to fall in love with for the first time.

6. “The Chain” (1977)

Let’s move to a non-single that, for me, may be my picks for the band’s crowning achievement. When I first heard “The Chain,” I was ensconced in the harder-rocking sounds of nighttime rock radio. Some were Fleetwood Mac’s contemporaries, like Led Zeppelin and the Who, but many were 80s and 90s groups that imbued their music with an edgy nihilism Millennials are all too familiar with. I found enough similarities in this song that made me instantly perk up and take notice. It had an edge to it. There was this urgency at its core that I couldn’t shake, long after the station had gone in and out of multiple commercial breaks.

For something that leaves such a stark impression, it’s kind of shocking how much of an afterthought it was during the Rumours sessions. For most of the album’s recording, it was in some state of incompletion, starting life as a blues-rock number before the band reworked it multiple times with new verses and an intro Buckingham nicked from an earlier song he’d recorded with Nicks. That opening, while subdued compared to what comes after, carries a certain amount of foreboding. The group lets you ease into the song while also letting you know you should buckle up.

Then come the verses, with Nicks calm and controlled behind the mic, levitating above a groove that flexes its muscle during the chorus without bowling you over. Only when John McVie’s bass solo arrives does “The Chain” explode with the ferocity it’s been teasing for the better part of three minutes. Despite what’s preceded it, you’re not really prepared for that low, thunderous figure on first listen. It just lands, followed quickly by Buckingham’s searing guitar. As the BBC proved by making the track its Formula 1 theme music, nothing in Fleetwood Mac’s catalog hits quite like this turned all the way up.

7. “Tusk” (1979)

Looking back at Fleetwood Mac’s level of fame post-Rumours, you’d think they would’ve made anything but Tusk, this gargantuan double LP that, in many ways, was the diametric opposite of that smash hit. Pulling more from post-punk and new wave than anything in the band’s history, it’s divisive, largely incoherent, and intentionally strange, but those aspects are also part of its charm. It was recorded at great expense, using an early 24-track studio setup that put every bell and whistle at Buckingham’s restless creative fingertips. No one song exemplifies that despondent decadence more than the title track.

Built around this militaristic, marching band rhythm, it’s a haunting piece of work. The guitar element is almost as spooky as the half-whispered vocals, asking the listener to eavesdrop on a partner the writer suspects of infidelity. The horn section from the USC Trojan marching band comes in to lighten the atmosphere for a few seconds, but even that turns out to be a headfake, with the spell broken only a few seconds later by Fleetwood’s abrasive drum intrusion. None of it should work together nearly as well as it does, nor should it have been accepted as readily as it was by the general public. It’s too weird a composition.

And yet, somehow that’s what happened. Call it hubris after shattering vinyl sales records and earning an ungodly amount of money on tour, but “Tusk” ended up being one of the more impressive achievements in the Fleetwood Mac discography. The single peaked at No. 1 on the Hot 100, helping the album go 2x Platinum in the United States. Still popular and, for many artists, would’ve represented a positive. But, compared to Rumours, it was considered a disappointment.

And it only gets stranger from there …

8. “Gypsy” (1982)

On several fronts, “Gypsy” reaches back into Nicks’s past in search of simpler, more comforting times.

Initially penned in 1979 and intended for her 1981 solo debut, Bella Donna (which absolutely rips, by the way), this song became a tribute to her close friend Robin Anderson, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer while she was pregnant. After that incident shook Nicks to her core, she decided to shelve it until Fleetwood Mac’s next album, which turned out to be 1982’s Mirage. “Gypsy was [written] about the fact that she wasn’t going to see the rest of this,” Nicks explained. “I still see your bright eyes, it was like she wasn’t going to make it. And I was like the lone gypsy. This was my best friend from when I was 15, and so I was a solo gypsy all of a sudden, and it was very sad for me, and that’s sometimes when I write my very best songs.”

Indeed, it’s one of the most moving pieces of music Nicks ever made. It’s remarkable in its economy, not wasting any words yet remaining at least partially oblique about its true meaning. The entire stream-of-consciousness story takes place in one room, stripped bare except for the memories that loom large in the walls and floorboards. It’s about going back to your roots, whether you want to or not, and facing the reality that someone who had your back and was by your side through thick and thin won’t be able to continue the journey with you anymore. It brought me to tears when I went back to listen to it again for this write-up. It’s lost none of its power.

Mirage spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1982, buoyed in part by “Gypsy,” which peaked at No. 12 on the Hot 100. I suppose that’s evidence that, even grappling with tragedy, Nicks could still weave it into a universal statement. If it’s not her most personal song, it’s surely up near the top of that list.

9. “Everywhere” (1987)

If you read the behind-the-scenes accounts from the band’s members, not to mention producer Richard Dashut and engineer Greg Droman, it’s a miracle Tango in the Night got made at all. Substance abuse, power trips, and fragmented interpersonal dynamics made the recording sessions exceedingly tedious. Collective patience wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the songs on that LP were recorded at half-speed to make them sound as light and airy as possible, which must’ve made for some excruciating demo track listens. But, like many of their other releases, the final product is clearly worth the struggle.

The most notable song off Tango, “Everywhere,” is infectious in an undemanding sort of way. The opening chord jangle is an early misdirect, a false start for a track that immediately settles into this effortless, quite effervescent groove. It’s kind of danceable, but more of a song you can sit and nod your head along to, letting your mind wander into the most blissful corners of the soundstage. There’s no decoding necessary here, nor is there an escalating sense of melodrama. As a result, it goes down incredibly easily.

“Everywhere” also represents Fleetwood Mac at the tail end of their extended commercial peak. They didn’t exactly chase rapidly shifting music trends during the 80s, but they weren’t as irrelevant as some made them out to be. This song hit No. 14 on the Hot 100 in the US, but it climbed as high as No. 4 in the UK, where it’s widely regarded as one of the defining singles of their career. One of four Top 20 singles from Tango, it’s the last great statement from a lineup that would splinter when Buckingham departed the group before the subsequent tour.

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Which song makes the strongest case for you? And which one do you think belongs on this list that didn’t make the cut? Drop it in the comments.