Fleetwood Mac had three eras, the late 60s Blues Era, the early 70s Pop Era, and their most famous one, the Buckingham-Nicks Era.
When Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the British band at the very beginning of 1975, Fleetwood Mac was not well known in the United States. We’ll take a look at the music Fleetwood Mac made when five artists combined their talents…drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist and singer-songwriter Christine McVie, guitarist and singer-songwriter Lindsey Buckingham, and singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks.
The above six albums (recorded between 1975 & 1990) make up the bulk of the studio work by the Buckingham-Nicks Era of Fleetwood Mac. There were two albums after that, but they were not up to par, and one didn’t even chart. Their Greatest Hits album includes songs from five of these albums. Here are the songs selected.
It’s a fairly good collection, but is missing some key songs and feels incomplete.
Let’s look at their studio albums more closely. Every Fleetwood Mac fan should own the first two albums of the Buckingham-Nicks Era.
These are two great albums from 1975 & 1977, and are the two highest-selling albums by Fleetwood Mac. Their self titled album introduced us to the new lineup, and includes the classic tracks “Monday Morning”, “Rhiannon”, “Over My Head”, “Say You Love Me” and “Landslide”. It took their hit singles and a lot of touring, but eventually Fleetwood Mac hit #1 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart.
Rumours is one of the most popular albums of all time. It spent an incredible 31 weeks in the #1 position, and almost unbelievably is still found high on many yearly sales and streaming charts. Fleetwood Mac fans likely know all of the songs, and most of the tracks received radio airplay, so it’s kind of like a greatest hits collection.
This is the listing from the first CD of my Deluxe Edition, and you can see it includes “Silver Springs”, which had been left off the original 1977 album because of time limitations of the vinyl format.
The next four albums could not possibly live up to the brilliance of Rumours, but they still have some great songs, which are shown on a couple of playlists below.
Thought you might like to see another fan’s two CD-length “Fleetwood Mac Best” playlists. These songs are (mostly) in chronological order, and under the lists you can see which albums they belong to.
The breakdown of songs to albums: Best 1 1-7 Fleetwood Mac, 8-18 Rumours, 19-21 Mirage. Best 2 1-8 Tusk, 9-13 Tango In The Night, 14 is a single, 15-20 Behind The Mask.
Tusk provides as many songs as Fleetwood Mac, but it’s a double album, and the songs are not as iconic. The surprise here is that Behind The Mask has six very good songs included, even though it’s somewhat of an overlooked album (since Lindsey Buckingham wasn’t on it).
The songwriting breakdown is interesting. Christine McVie has the most with 16, while Buckingham & Nicks each have 11, and there are two outside writers. If you look at almost any sales or streaming statistics, the songs by Stevie Nicks are the most popular, even though she didn’t write as many of the band’s hits as McVie. Of course Nicks emerged as the group’s biggest star, had many solo hits, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as both a member of the band and as a solo artist.
Here’s Nicks shown during the height of her career…in 1976 as part of the band, and then in 1981 on tour for her smash album Bella Donna.
The popularity of Fleetwood Mac has been a phenomenon. Their main studio recordings seem timeless, and they were an extremely popular touring act for decades.