It's nearly 35 years since Fleetwood Mac's seminal 1977 album Rumours reached number one - and to mark the occasion it has been released in expanded and remastered editions, with a triple CD set containing the original album in remastered form, unreleased live recordings from a 1977 tour and previously unissued outtakes.
A deluxe edition of Rumours adds a DVD featuring a 1977 documentary, and a vinyl edition of the album. Helped by the re-screening of the 2009 documentary Don't Stop on BBC2 eight days ago, and group leader Mick Fleetwood's subsequent appearance on BBC1's The One Show, the newly retooled set sold 25,675 copies last week to re-enter the chart at number three. It is its first appearance in the Top 10 since 25 March 1978, though it did reach number 18 in 1997.
Although now one of the UK's 20 biggest selling albums, with sales of 3,437,677, Rumours started slowly. First charting on 26 February 1977 - nearly 36 years ago - it debuted at number 57, then jumped to number seven and reached number one for the first and only time on its 48th appearance in the chart, nearly a year later. Four singles from Rumours made the Top 50 but none made the Top 20, with Dreams providing its highest charting hit by reaching a modest number 24. But the album had massive staying power, and according to OCC its tally of 493 weeks on the chart is the highest of any album.
The chart organisation has marked the occasion by revealing Fleetwood Mac's biggest-selling tracks of the digital era here www.officialcharts.com - which shows five of Rumours' 11 tracks to be among the Top 10. To supplement that list, we present Rumours' tracks ranked in order of their popularity as stand-alone downloads in the context of both the album and Fleetwood Mac's entire catalogue. The first position shown is their Rumours ranking, the second (parenthetical) figure is their overall rank among Fleetwood Mac downloads in the digital era, the third is the track's title and the fourth is a comparative sales ranking :
1 (1) Go Your Own Way
2 (2) The Chain - 78,
3 (5) Dreams - 41,
4 (8) Don't Stop - 21,
5 (10) Songbird - 19,
6 (17) You Make Loving Fun - 9,
7 (18) Never Going Back Again - 9,
8 (22) Second Hand News - 5,
9 (23) Gold Dust Woman - 5,
10 (28) I Don't Want To Know - 4,
11 (30) Oh Daddy - 2.
Stevie Nicks wrote the number three track Dreams but also all of the three least popular. Overall sales of tracks from Rumour passed the 500,000 mark last week.
Well, the new Rumours 4 CD package arrived yesterday and for over $90.00 with shipping it is for the most part very disappointing.
ReplyDeleteThe CD of the original album with Silver Springs doesn’t work because the put it at the end, so it is right after Gold Dust Woman. It would have been better to put Silver Springs in the place of Songbird, and put Songbird at the end to close the album.
The two outtake CDs are fun to listen to, but not something you will play over and over. They will get played a few times and then never again. And a lot of them are already floating around on YouTube.
The live CD of the Rumours tour is good, especially the live versions of Dreams and Don’t Stop, since those songs that were on the 1980 album Fleetwood Mac live, from the Tusk tour, were both actually recorded at sound checks, and not actually live in concert. Also The Chain, Gold Dust Woman and Oh Daddy are good. But overall they should have included a few more songs on this live CD. It clocks in at 55 minutes and surely they could have added a few more live songs to make it worth the price.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing here is the DVD of the Rosebud film. Most of it has also been on YouTube for years, and since Fleetwood Mac never put out a DVD of their videos ever, this would have been the chance to do so. The DVD is only about 30 minutes, and they should have added the wonderful taped version of Dreams, and the performances of Over My Head and World Turning from the Midnight Special TV show. They also should have included the videos of Tusk, Sara, Hold Me, Gypsy, Big Love, Seven Wonders, Little Lies, As Long As You Follow, Save Me and Skies The Limit. It would have made this DVD really special, and again, worth the money.
As for the new album itself, I, like most people don’t even own a record player anymore, so this is a total waste. I know albums are making sort of a comeback, but that is only to a very small audience, so this should have been sold separately to those who want it. Most people will never play it.
Fleetwood Mac doesn’t seem to completely understand what their fan base wants and sometimes they inadvertently insult us by appearing to not care and make us pay for what we don’t want and not give us what we do.