Rumours (album)
Rumours is the eleventh studio album by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 4 February 1977 in the United States and on 11 February 1977 in the United Kingdom[3] by Warner Bros. Records. Largely recorded in California in 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The recording sessions took place as band members dealt with breakups and used drugs heavily, both of which shaped the album's direction and lyrics.
This article is about the album by Fleetwood Mac. For the album by Arrogance, see Rumors (album).Rumours
4 February 1977
February–August 1976
- Criteria (Miami)
- Record Plant (Sausalito and Los Angeles)
- Zellerbach Auditorium (Berkeley)
- Wally Heider's Studio 3 (Hollywood)
- Davlen (North Hollywood)
38:55
- Fleetwood Mac
- Ken Caillat
- Richard Dashut
Recorded with the intention of making "a pop album" that would expand on the commercial success of the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac, the music of Rumours has a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation, accented rhythms, guitars, and keyboards; its lyrics concern personal and often troubled relationships. Its release was postponed by delays in the mixing process. The band promoted the album with a worldwide concert tour. Rumours became the band's first number-one album on the UK Albums Chart and also topped the US Billboard 200. The songs "Go Your Own Way", "Dreams", "Don't Stop", and "You Make Loving Fun" were released as singles, all of which reached the US Top 10, with "Dreams" reaching number one.
Rumours was a commercial success, selling 13 million copies worldwide by 1980.[4] It garnered wide acclaim from critics, who praised its production quality and the vocal harmonies of the band's three singers, which since have inspired musical acts in various genres. It won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammy Awards and received Diamond certifications in several countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and in the US where it is certified 21× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). As of February 2023, Rumours had sold over 40 million copies worldwide.
Often considered Fleetwood Mac's magnum opus, Rumours has frequently been called one of the greatest albums of all time. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003,[5] and in the following year was remastered and reissued with the addition of "Silver Springs", which had been excluded from the original release, and a bonus CD of outtakes from the recording sessions. It was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2017, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress.[6] In 2020, Rumours was ranked 7th in Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[7]
Background[edit]
After guitarist Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac in 1974, drummer Mick Fleetwood, keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, and bass guitarist John McVie were joined by guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks.[8] In July 1975, Fleetwood Mac released its eponymous tenth album to great commercial success, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. in 1976; the record's singles "Over My Head", "Rhiannon" and "Say You Love Me" all reached the Top 20 there.
But the band's success belied turmoil amongst its members. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced, ending eight years of marriage.[9][10] The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters.[11] Buckingham and Nicks were having an on/off relationship that led them to fight often. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together.[12] Fleetwood faced domestic problems of his own after discovering that his wife Jenny, mother of his two children, was having an affair with his best friend.[13]
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, and Jeremy Spencer for a 10th-anniversary tour.[14] 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.[11] Fleetwood has noted the "tremendous emotional sacrifices" made by everyone just to attend studio work.[15] In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac crafted some new tracks in Florida.[16] Founding members Fleetwood and John McVie fired producer Keith Olsen, because he favoured a lower emphasis on the rhythm section. The duo formed a company called Seedy Management to represent the band's interests.[17]
Composition[edit]
Lyrics[edit]
Fleetwood Mac's main songwriters—Buckingham, Christine McVie, and Nicks—worked individually on songs but sometimes shared lyrics. "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.[25] According to Christine McVie, the fact that the lyricists were focusing on the various separations became apparent to the band only in hindsight.[36] "You Make Loving Fun" is about her boyfriend, Fleetwood Mac's lighting director, whom she dated after splitting from John.[26] Nicks' "Dreams" details a breakup and has a hopeful message, while Buckingham's similar effort in "Go Your Own Way" is more pessimistic.[37] 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.[25]
"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.[25] McVie's next track, "Songbird", features more introspective lyrics about "nobody and everybody" in the form of "a little prayer".[38] "Oh Daddy", the last McVie song on the album, was written about Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd, who had just got back together.[39][40][41] The band's nickname for Fleetwood was "the Big Daddy".[25] 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.[25] After struggling with the rock lifestyle, Nicks became addicted to cocaine; the lyrics address her belief in "keeping going".[42]
Music[edit]
Featuring a soft rock and pop rock sound,[43][44] Rumours is built around a mix of acoustic and electric instrumentation. Buckingham's guitar work and Christine McVie's use of Fender Rhodes piano or Hammond B-3 organ are present on all but two tracks. The record often includes stressed drum sounds and distinctive percussion such as congas and maracas. It opens with "Second Hand News", originally an acoustic demo titled "Strummer". After hearing Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'", 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. "Dreams" includes "ethereal spaces" and a recurring two note pattern on the bass guitar.[25] 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; the band added vocals and further instrumental audio tracks to make it more layered.[45][46] Inspired by triple step dancing patterns, "Don't Stop" includes both conventional acoustic and tack piano. 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 dance beat influenced by The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man". The album's pace slows down with "Songbird", conceived solely by Christine McVie using a nine-foot Steinway piano.[25]
Side two of Rumours begins with "The Chain", one of the record's most complicated compositions. A Christine McVie demo, "Keep Me There",[25] and a Nicks song were re-cut in the studio and were heavily edited to form parts of the track.[47] The whole of the band crafted the rest using an approach akin to creating a film score; John McVie provided a prominent solo using a fretless 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, 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 and harmonising vocals. Influenced by the music of Buddy Holly, 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, which has music from a harpsichord, a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and a dobro, an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones.[25]
Commercial performance[edit]
Rumours was a huge commercial success and became Fleetwood Mac's second US number-one record, following the 1975 eponymous release.[57] It stayed at the top of the Billboard 200 for 31 non-consecutive weeks,[21] while also reaching number one in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada,[55] and New Zealand.[85] It re-entered the Billboard 200 chart at number 11 in May 2011, and the Australian ARIA chart at number 2, after several songs from the album were used for the "Rumours" episode of the American TV series Glee.[86][87] It re-entered the Billboard 200 top ten in October 2020 in the wake of a viral TikTok by Nathan Apodaca which showed him skateboarding while "Dreams" played, even prompting Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks to create similar videos.[88][89] The album was certified platinum in America and the UK within months of release after one million units and 300,000 units were shipped, respectively.[90][91] All three major US trade publications—Billboard, Cash Box, and Record World—named it Album of the Year for 1977.[92] After a debut at number seven, Rumours peaked at the top of the UK Albums Chart in January 1978, becoming Fleetwood Mac's first number one album in the country.[93] In February, the band and co-producers Caillat and Dashut won the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.[57] By March, the album had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, including over eight million in the US alone.[92]
By 1980, 13 million copies of Rumours had been sold worldwide.[4] As of 2017, sales were over 40 million copies.[94][39] As of November 2023, Rumours has spent over 1,000 weeks in the top 100 of the UK Albums Chart.[95] It is the 11th-best-selling album in UK history, and is certified 14× platinum by the British Phonographic Industry, the equivalent of 4.2 million units shipped.[91] The record has received a Diamond Award from the Recording Industry Association of America for a 20× platinum certification or 20 million copies shipped, making it, as of 2021, tied for the 11th-highest certified album in US history (by number of copies shipped).[96] Rumours was the UK's bestselling album on vinyl during 2020, with the Official Charts Company confirming 32,500 annual sales in the format.[97]