Christine McVie believed in true love, but she also believed in Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie brought romantic optimism to Fleetwood Mac

Annie Zaleski - NPR

December 5, 2022

The song "Everywhere," a frothy pop hit found on Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night that's been covered by Vampire Weekend and Paramore, might be Christine McVie's most optimistic moment. As spine-tingling synths and undulating rhythms swirl around like glittery fairy dust, McVie, who died Nov. 30 at the age of 79 after a short illness, raves about a partner, alternating between wanting to shout about her new love and being left speechless by their beauty. "I want to be with you everywhere," she coos atop a slick of glacial harmonies. It's that extra word that makes a difference. She doesn't just want to be with someone, in general — she wants to be with them everywhere. The first points to making a connection; the second implies deeper pride and commitment and being all-in with your heart.

As a keyboardist, sometimes lead vocalist, and frequent principal songwriter for Fleetwood Mac from 1971's Future Games onward, McVie consistently embraced this type of deep, romantic optimism, comparing love to sunshine (1972's "Spare Me a Little of Your Love"), documenting flashes of unabashed flirting (1982's "Hold Me") and extolling the virtues of true love (1995's "I Do").

Such precision was a hallmark of this West Midlands-raised musician, whose father taught violin and grandfather played the organ at Westminster Abbey. Long before "Everywhere," McVie had been fond of stretching out words and syllables to emphasize poignant themes — as heard on 1975's slinky "Warm Ways," which amplifies "dream," "morning" and "light" to illuminate the coziness of sleeping by a beloved. McVie's busy, bluesy keyboard style, informed by piano lessons but also Fats Domino, Otis Spann and Freddie King, paired well with a soulful alto.

McVie's talent coalesced perhaps most strikingly on the tender piano ballad "Songbird," a highlight of Rumours. Heartfelt and gentle, the song describes the solace of being with someone whose love just feels right. "Songbird" was a piece dusted with magic: Written during a middle-of-the-night session, it was more like she channeled it from another dimension, as she once described to The Guardian. "I sang it from beginning to end: everything. I can't tell you quite how I felt; it was as if I'd been visited – it was a very spiritual thing."

It's a notable reminder that Fleetwood Mac's catalog isn't all bitter and beautiful breakup songs, though romantic tension will always be central to the band's appeal (and something of an albatross, too). On one hand, the band's complicated entanglements and tenuous relations led to creative genius, as with Rumours. More than 35 years after its release, the album remains an astonishing sales juggernaut, in no small part because of its nuanced depictions of stormy relationships. The songs function like conversations in a crowded room; Lindsey Buckingham tells one-time partner, Stevie Nicks, she can "go your own way" and "call it another lonely day," while Nicks in turn volleys back, "Listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness."

On the other hand, Fleetwood Mac's narrative is still dominated by the push-and-pull between Buckingham and Nicks, even though the couple broke up in the mid-'70s. Despite the passage of time, their up-and-down relationship remains a subject of fascination, most recently when personal disagreements played out in the press after Buckingham was reportedly fired from the group in 2018.

Not that McVie was immune to the intra-band romantic tumult: Then named Christine Perfect, she married bassist John McVie in 1968 and joined Fleetwood Mac a few years later. The couple divorced in 1976, and their post-breakup years dovetailed with the band's rise to superstardom, which McVie acknowledged could be difficult. "Both Stevie and I, we were married to Fleetwood Mac," she told Guitar World in 1997, as quoted in the 2016 book Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters. "That was what we did and it was a harsh marriage." McVie did remarry for real — to Eddy Quintela, her co-writer on multiple songs from 1987 onward — but that marriage also eventually ended.

Despite the real-life romantic disappointments, McVie's music wasn't diaristic. Speaking to The Guardian earlier this year, she was ambiguous about her inspirations: "Most of my songs are based on truth and real people, but a lot of them are just fantasies, really." That perhaps explains why McVie's songs maintain so much optimism despite lyrics that often express uncertainty.

Her narrators often aren't sure where they stand in a relationship or put up with challenging behaviors: indifference, moodiness, and emotional distance. On Tusk's brooding "Brown Eyes," the protagonist reveals her desire for someone right away, in the first verse. Only later do doubts creep in about their long-term chances: "And are you just another liar?"

The main characters of two other Tusk highlights — the languid, twangy album-opener "Over & Over" and the rocker "Think About Me" — ask for clarity point-blank. The latter's narrator justifies the ask by pointing out how much leeway she gives the other person: "I don't hold you down / And maybe that's why you're around."

But McVie's songs saw that admitting vulnerability could also be a strength. Even if a relationship wasn't perfect, better days might still be around the corner. Her protagonists might be insecure, but they didn't come across as meek — as in 1975's "Over My Head," in which things aren't necessarily going well with a moody partner: "Sometimes I can't help but feel / That I'm wasting all of my time" — and they weren't afraid to assert themselves. On the piano-driven "Prove Your Love," she explicitly says: "If you want to please me, baby / Then don't act like a child." There's pragmatism at the heart of her quest for silver linings.

In interviews, McVie frequently downplayed or understated her approach to songwriting. "I'm a pretty basic love-song writer," she told Guitar World. "Pretty basic relationship writer. I'd be the last one to say it for myself, but I've been told that I have a way of saying the obvious in a non-obvious way." McVie knew her strengths and stuck to them. "I stayed with songs that are simple and unpretentious," she told the Los Angeles Times while promoting her second solo album, a 1984 self-titled affair. "That's what I do best."

That consistency grounded Fleetwood Mac as the band's music evolved from snaky blues jams to polished pop-rock and into more experimental territory, before settling into an adult contemporary groove. McVie's melodies stood out like polished gems sifted out of an archaeological dig; early compositions like the pastoral folk of "Show Me a Smile" or the barnstorming boogie "Just Crazy Love" gave way to sleeker, polished fare on the Buckingham-less 1990 LP Behind the Mask and Nicks-free 1995 album Time. The former's title track, written by McVie, is especially haunting in the way it calls someone out for their two-facedness and says in no uncertain terms there are no second chances.

"We all just complement each other, because we're such different writers," McVie told me in 2017, in reference to Fleetwood Mac. "My contribution is the romance and the warmth. The love songs."

McVie only released three solo albums in her career (though earlier this year she released a compilation, Songbird, which featured two unreleased solo songs) and ended up taking a 16-year break from Fleetwood Mac, between 1998 and 2014. The time away rekindled McVie's enthusiasm for music. Decades after joining Fleetwood Mac, she never lost the romantic notion of being in a band. "Carnival Begin," recorded for her joint 2017 album with Lindsey Buckingham, details her feelings about jumping back into the chaos of touring and the Fleetwood Mac machine: "I want it all / All the sparkling things / A new merry go round."

McVie believed in true love, but she also believed in Fleetwood Mac. Talking to Rolling Stone in 1997, she shared one potential inspiration she thought of while conjuring "Songbird": "I think I just was thinking of all the band members – 'God, wouldn't it be nice just to be happy?' " That insight brings new meaning to one of the most touching lines on "Songbird": "I wish you all the love in the world / But most of all, I wish it from myself."

A life of music, laughter and ‘fantastic friends’

FLEETWOOD MAC SINGER-SONGWRITER WAS SIMPLE, DIRECT AND CONFESSIONAL IN HER SONGS — AND IN HER LIFE

WHEN I REACHED THE CHORUS THEY STARTED SINGING WITH ME AND FELL RIGHT INTO IT. I HEARD THIS INCREDIBLE SOUND — OUR THREE VOICES — AND  SAID TO MYSELF: ‘IS THIS ME SINGING?’ I COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW GREAT THIS THREE-VOICE HARMONY WAS. — CHRISTINE MCVIE

Christine Mcvie, who has died aged 79, was a singer and songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. She saw the band through their first incarnation as a British blues band and was part of the successful lineup during the subsequent years in the U.S., when her writing and singing formed the backbone to the highly personal album Rumours (1977), a musical autobiography cataloguing the emotional and drugfuelled lives of the band’s five members.

A classically trained pianist with a warm and smoky alto singing voice, she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970, a year after her marriage to the band’s bass player, John Mcvie. At this stage based in Britain and still very much part of the British blues scene, Fleetwood Mac had just lost their founding member, Peter Green.

Mcvie was to become a key member (and initially the only female) of the group. She recorded three albums with them before agreeing, reluctantly, to move to the U.S. with her husband and the band’s drummer, Mick Fleetwood, in an attempt to revive Fleetwood Mac’s waning popularity.

Within a year they had recruited two American musicians, Lindsey Buckingham, an established guitarist and singer-songwriter, and his girlfriend and musical partner, Stevie Nicks. Buckingham and Nicks became, alongside Mcvie, the band’s principal singers and songwriters.

From the start, Mcvie realized that they had found a distinct new sound. “I started playing Say You Love Me,” she recalled, “and when I reached the chorus they started singing with me and fell right into it. I heard this incredible sound — our three voices — and said to myself: ‘Is this me singing?’ I couldn’t believe how great this three-voice harmony was.”

The three singers also complemented each other in terms of their songwriting and performing styles. Mcvie was the most understated, and when on stage she would always remain seated at her keyboards. Her songs were simple, direct and confessional, usually about the joy and heartache of love. Her fellow singer-songwriters were in turn mystical and ethereal (Nicks) and highly strung but technically controlled (Buckingham).

The new lineup released the album Fleetwood Mac in 1975. In addition to hit songs written and performed by Buckingham and Nicks, the album included Over My Head and Say You Love Me, by Mcvie, both of which reached the Top 20. But it was Rumours, which, two years later, was to become one of the biggest selling albums of all time.

Christine McVie appeared to maintain a cosmic serenity through it all

Voice of composure

Christine Mcvie helped hold Fleetwood Mac together with cosmic calm

CHRIS RICHARDS

The Washington Post

Love songs can be quaint little things or wild metaphysical proclamations, and it's so nice when they can be both, like in the case of Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere.

The year is 1987. The place is in the song's title. Christine Mcvie, her band's sturdiest yet somewhat stealthiest member, soars into the refrain on a rising melody that feels like a heart being released from gravity. Then comes a line as casually wonderful as a scribbled love note. “I wanna be with you everywhere.”

Here's the small way to hear it: I want you by my side when I wake up, when I walk the dog, when I do the grocery shopping.

Here's the big way to hear it: I want to experience the entirety of space-time with you, the sheer immensity of our love permeating every moment and location in this known universe, including the produce aisle.

In the turbulence of the Fleetwood Mac universe, it's also easy to hear Everywhere as a sort of culmination.

Mcvie, who died Wednesday at 79, wrote the song for the band's last great album, Tango in the Night, and it contains so many of the group's paradoxical magic tricks — vocal harmonies that sound both dreamy and in-your-face; a groove that lands pillowy and taut; that twitchy yearning beneath an overall sheen of calm that makes so many Fleetwood Mac songs feel effortless, urgent, fragile and expensive.

Famously, Mcvie was the voice of composure in her historically tumultuous crew. She married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie in 1968, then joined the group a few years later, only to divorce in 1976 — a separation outshone by a concurrent split between bandmates Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. A year later, the gang released their planeteating Rumours album and became the biggest rock stars drawing breath.

McVie appeared to maintain a cosmic serenity through it all. This year, in an interview with Rolling Stone, she described herself as “the Mother Teresa who would hang out with everybody or just try and (keep) everything nice and cool and relaxed” — additionally noting, “Even though I am quite a peaceful person, I did enjoy that storm.”

Was she talking about her role in the band's dramarama or her place in their music?

Focus your attention on Mcvie's voice during the finest songs that she wrote, co-wrote, sung and co-sung — Don't Stop, You Make Loving Fun, Hold Me, Little Lies, Everywhere — and you can hear the durability of her singing as a form of peacekeeping, imbuing Fleetwood Mac's opulence with a sense of consistency, continuity and equanimity.

In that same interview, when asked in which era of the band she felt most happy, Mcvie said, “I think I was happy pretty much all the time.”

Christine McVie's music so powerful, so meaningful

Christine McVie

Spotify Playlist

1

At least today, in their grief, everybody can listen to Christine McVie's music.

It didn't used to be this way. First and foremost because the record stores immediately ran out of inventory, and it would take weeks for new records to be pressed and shipped.

But that makes the point that we owned a limited number of records in the pre-internet, pre-Spotify era. Which is all to say there were groups we were aware of that we owned no albums of, like Fleetwood Mac.

Of course I knew "Oh Well," it was an FM staple when most people were still listening to AM. FM addicts were hipper, clued-in on certain tracks and bands that were unknown to the hoi polloi.

And ultimately "Oh Well" was stripped into the band's 1969 album "Then Play On," which I saw all the time in the bins, it had that unique cover.

And then Santana had a huge hit with "Black Magic Woman," which the same FM acolytes knew was written by Peter Green and done by Fleetwood Mac, even though in many cases we'd never heard the original, which we eventually did, you'd think it would have gained contemporaneous airplay on these same FM stations, but it did not. But eventually we were at somebody's house who had "Then Play On." That was a feature of going to a friend's domicile, to not only comb through their albums, but to play certain tracks you loved that you didn't own and probably never would.

And then Peter Green left the band and not only was there an endless succession of guitarists, one left the group to join the Children of God, and then there was that fake band put out by the manager and...

This was all news, I knew all this, but most of the music meant nothing to me, I'd never even heard it.

And then came "Station Man." Christine McVie neither wrote it nor sang the lead vocal, after all she wasn't even a band member, but she was unmistakable in the background vocals, it was the first Fleetwood Mac track I cottoned to, that I wanted to hear again, that I turned up every time I heard it on the radio.

And then Christine joined the band. I read that she'd been in Chicken Shack, but that band meant absolutely nothing in the U.S. Cool that she was married to the group's bass player, John McVie, but...

It was the early seventies. You could make a number of albums for a major label and never have a hit. Which was the case with Fleetwood Mac. They'd promote the records, you'd see them in ads, in the store, but chances are you never bought them. I certainly did not.

And then, five albums after "Kiln House," which contained the aforementioned "Station Man," came "Heroes Are Hard to Find."

I'm talking the single, the opening cut, not the entire album. Like "Station Man," you heard "Heroes Are Hard to Find" on the radio and continued to hear it. There was that groove, but even more there was that recitation of the title in the chorus that was so magical, actually the same magic Christine brought to subsequent Fleetwood Mac albums, but this was the first time I remembered it shining, hearing it shine on the radio.

And then came "Over My Head."

2

"You can take me to the paradise

And then again you can be cold as ice"

Let's see, it was my second year in Utah. At the end of which I realized I had to leave or else I'd be there forever.

You see I'd made friends with the freestylers the previous May in Mammoth, we were all gonna compete on the tour the following year. Jimmy Kay had competed the year before.

But Jimmy got aced out the following December, I choked and Jimmy went back to New Jersey to lick his wounds with his family, Al went back to L.A. and I stayed in the apartment with "Chang," a Vietnamese student who hadn't heard from his family in years.

This is when it hit me, what was I doing here? I didn't even want to ski. It made no sense. When I was in college skiing was part of my overall life, now it was everything and I needed more.

Jimmy said I could sleep in his bed while he was gone (I'd been sleeping on the couch before this). And therefore I could play his 8-tracks, he had two brand new ones, that he'd recorded from albums he bought, "Fleetwood Mac" and "A Night at the Opera." This is when I fell in love with "I'm in Love With My Car." And "39." My favorite song on the album was and probably still is "Your My Best Friend," but when listening to the album these two tracks surfaced. As for "Bohemian Rhapsody," it was just a cool novelty song, a track dedicated radio listeners knew, not a classic on the level of "Stairway to Heaven," that would take years, really it was the "Wayne's World" movie that made it iconic, the same way "Don't Stop Believin'" was made iconic by its inclusion in the finale of "The Sopranos."

Now I first heard "Over My Head" on the radio, I found it infectious, because contrary to seemingly everything else, it was understated, a track that set your mind free. You know, the kind that made you think you too could be in love, maybe even with Christine McVie.

Yes, I knew who she was. Stevie Nicks was just another woman in the band, one who did not play an instrument, Christine's single came out first. And I'd say Christine was the star, but that's just the point, she was an anti-star, she wasn't dolled up to look like a model, she wasn't asked twenty questions in a dumb magazine article, she was one of the guys, a boys' girl, and there were very few of those in rock and roll. Bonnie Raitt is the only other one that comes to mind. You felt like you could hang with both of them, that there was something below the surface, that they spoke your language, that they weren't prissy, you didn't have to be on guard the entire time, you could just be yourself. and isn't that what we're all looking for?

And on Christmas Day, my parents called. Jews do this, even though the holiday does not apply. Usually we eat Chinese food and go to the movies, maybe two, at least that's what we used to do, well, when I moved to L.A. But before that, every Christmas Day I went skiing, and my parents were in Vermont doing same and I told my mother I was at loose ends and she castigated me and told me to get a job. My father said he didn't know what was going on, but he was gonna send me twenty bucks and I should go for a good meal, that I'd figure it out.

And then I got back into Jimmy's bed and fired up "Over My Head," listened to it over and over again, which ain't that easy to do on an 8-track.

There’s much to applaud about the multitalented Christine McVie

Farewell to Christine McVie, who gave us music for all time

Barbara Ellen

Dec 4, 2022

The Guardian

The Fleetwood Mac singer songwriter, who died last week, is among a select group whose music is culturally indelible

Most of us have our favourite musical artists, the ones we deliberately seek out, but what about the other kind, the ones who wriggle in through the trapdoor of your mind? That, in the sweetest, strangest way, gatecrash your cultural consciousness when you’re not quite paying attention, then embed there. Forever.

When news came of the death of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie at age 79, the internet did one of its loving, sorrowful double-takes. Of course it did. There’s much to applaud about the multitalented McVie: those scuffed-velvet vocals; the chilled charisma of a woman who truly knew herself; that decades-spanning rock’n’roll sisterhood with fellow band member Stevie Nicks laying waste to the sexist fiction that two highly creative women always have to end up in a catfight.

And, of course, McVie’s songwriting: Little Lies, Songbird, Don’t Stop, The Chain – the last three all from a single album, Fleetwood Mac’s 1977, 45m-selling Rumours. This is where the reaction to McVie, and more generally to Fleetwood Mac, starts to splinter. On the one hand, the many devotees, the Mac-heads. On the other, people, hazy on details, but who realise they know more Mac-songs than they thought. And who mentally flash on to the Rumours album cover (Mick with his ponytail; Nicks arching in shadowy robes) as easily as recalling the face of a childhood friend.

None of which is remotely surprising. What McVie’s passing brings home is that, somewhere along the way, she and Fleetwood Mac near as dammit became their own genre. That they’re part of a relatively select canon of artists who have not only been enjoyed for decades, but have become culturally indelible, like a tattooing of the collective psyche.

There’s nothing new about this or about monetising it. It’s why companies such as Hipgnosis have been paying out billions on back catalogues, to older and younger artists (with McVie and certain other members of the band signing up). The companies know certain artists have an impact far beyond music platforms. That it’s not just about what people choose to hear through their headphones or speakers, it’s also about musical osmosis: background sounds swirling around us. The idea that, to a certain extent, the soundtrack of your life is decided without you.

This is how songs from rock, pop, and every other genre become as immortal as Christmas carols. How Elton John can announce that next year’s headlining Glastonbury slot will be his last, but we all know Goodbye Yellow Brick Road isn’t going anywhere. It’s where Madonna will always be vogueing and the Beatles eternally walk barefoot across the Abbey Road crossing. It’s also where Christine will be playing synth and singing into her mike, alongside Stevie, John, Mick and Lindsey forever.

Isn’t this the sweet spot in which Fleetwood Mac find themselves? They’re woven into the tapestry of life in a way beyond mere commercial longevity, rather a blend of talent, magnetism and cultural immersion. I like to think the famously modest McVie was privately thrilled this is where her musical contribution ended up. She did the work, she paid her dues and now all those songs – those California-soaked hymns to dreams and nightmares – are just “there”, part of the collective memory; music society has decided it just can’t shake.

McVie forged a legendary history on the Billboard Hot 100 with Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie’s Top 10 Biggest Hot 100 Hits

McVie forged a legendary history on the Billboard Hot 100 with Fleetwood Mac & as a soloist.

By Keith Caulfield

Billboard

Photo Randee St. Nicholas

Late singer-songwriter Christine McVie, who died Nov. 30 at age 79, left a great impression on Billboard’s charts through the decades, thanks to her pure pop/rock sensibility that often lifted Fleetwood Mac, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band in which she was a longtime member, to incredible heights.

For most of Fleetwood Mac’s hitmaking career, McVie was one of its three primary singers and songwriters, alongside Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Notably, McVie wrote and sang lead vocals on three of the band’s top four biggest hits on the Billboard Hot 100 – including the group’s biggest song, “Hold Me.”

Billboard has exclusively compiled McVie’s top 10 biggest hits on the Hot 100 chart, based on actual performance on the weekly survey. Included were any charted songs by Fleetwood Mac that McVie wrote and on which she sang lead vocals, as well as her solo recordings outside the band.

McVie’s biggest Hot 100 hit is the 1982 Fleetwood Mac song “Hold Me,” which was released as the first single from the band’s Mirage album. It spent a staggering seven weeks at its peak of No. 4 on the weekly Hot 100 chart – a then-record for that peak rank. McVie sang lead vocals on “Hold Me,” and it was written by McVie and Robbie Patton. (Overall, “Hold Me” is Fleetwood Mac’s biggest Hot 100 hit, while the group’s No. 2 hit is its lone chart-topper on the weekly Hot 100 – 1977’s “Dreams,” penned by Nicks, who also sang its lead vocal.)

McVie’s second-biggest all-time Hot 100 hit is “Little Lies,” which was released in 1987 as the third single from Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night album. McVie had lead vocal duties on the cut, and she co-wrote it with her then-husband Eddy Quintela.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” – which was solely written by McVie, who shared lead vocals with Buckingham – is her third-biggest Hot 100 hit. The track became one of four top 10-charting singles from the mega-successful Rumours album. The set spent 31 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 – still a record for any album by a group.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Love Me” and “You Make Loving Fun” (both singularly written by McVie, who sang lead) round out McVie’s top five biggest Hot 100 hits. The former was released in 1976 as the final single from the band’s self-titled album. That album was the first to feature the lineup of Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Nicks, Christine McVie and her first husband John McVie.

The Buckingham/Fleetwood/Nicks/McVie/McVie lineup would release five studio albums (from 1975’s self-titled set through 1987’s Tango In the Night) and two live albums (1980’s Live and 1997’s The Dance). All four of the act’s No. 1 albums were by that famed lineup, with the self-titled set, Rumours, Mirage and The Dance all topping the Billboard 200.

Christine McVie’s 10 Biggest Billboard Hits recap is based on actual performance on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at No. 100 earning the least. To ensure equitable representation of the biggest hits from each era, certain time frames were weighted to account for the difference between turnover rates from those years.

10. Fleetwood Mac’s “Think About Me,” from Tusk, peaked at No. 20 in 1980.

09. Fleetwood Mac’s “Love In Store,” from Mirage, peaked at No. 22 in 1983.

08. Fleetwood Mac’s “Over My Head,” from the band’s self-titled 1975 album, peaked at No. 20 in 1976.

07. Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere,” from Tango in the Night, peaked at No. 14 in 1988.

06. Christine McVie’s “Got a Hold On Me,” from her self-titled second solo album, peaked at No. 10 in 1984.

05. Fleetwood Mac’s “You Make Loving Fun,” from Rumours, peaked at No. 9 in 1977.

04. Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Love Me,” from Fleetwood Mac, peaked at No. 11 in 1976.

03. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” from Rumours, peaked at No. 3 in 1977.

02. Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies,” from Tango in the Night, peaked at No. 4 in 1987.

01. Fleetwood Mac’s “Hold Me,” from Mirage, spent seven weeks at No. 4 in 1982.