'Greatest Hits'
- francescagelet
- Nov 13
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 14
I love a greatest hits album. They provide a tight little retrospective of a group’s best work without the burden of slogging through titles that offer between just one and four great tracks nestled among other less-than-great ones. Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles, Records by Foreigner, and Galore by The Cure are great representations of this subgenre.
Greatest Hits by Fleetwood Mac (obviously another great representation) is composed primarily of hits released by the band between 1975 and 1987. Against a backdrop of the second British Invasion, economic recession and rebounding, and the wind down of the Cold War, they carved out a niche somewhere between Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Grateful Dead. Where earlier hitmakers were largely driven by massive social and political upheaval, the relative stability of this time period allowed groups like Fleetwood Mac to look inward for inspiration. And boy did they.
What the band really has to offer is a raw look at deep love and massive betrayal, channeling the real-life drama that unfolded amongst its members, wrapped in a kind of groovy pop packaging. I don’t want to get into all the said drama here, but it was a lot. Most of the songs on this album were penned by Christine McVie, and are musically fun with a powerful lyrical undercurrent hinting at all the pain the group was feeling. She fills a more traditionally feminine role in her songwriting, with cheerier lyrics that seem almost sacrificial in their optimism. In Don’t Stop, for example, she says:
“Why not think about times to come?
And not about the things that you've done
If your life was bad to you
Just think what tomorrow will do
…
All I want is to see you smile
If it takes just a little while
I know you don't believe that it's true
I never meant any harm to you”
In Say You Love Me she goes so far as to ask for pity, saying, “I'm begging you for a little sympathy, And if you use me again, it'll be the end of me.” There is a tart, paper thin veneer to her lyrics, like she’s trying to hold it all together under a crushing weight.
And then there is the Stevie Nicks of it all. She provides an angle of powerful femineity, and speaks of sorrow without despair and love without submission. The album begins with the powerhouse, “Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night, And wouldn't you love to love her?“ And she keeps it up with tracks peppered throughout the album that weave in a certain complexity. Her songs layer in both a vocal and a lyrical richness that makes Greatest Hits truly sublime. While most of the other tunes could be particularly cutting rejects from the Beatles’ early days (not a knock, I love the early Beatles), Stevie’s songs are totally unique, ethereal, and almost otherworldly. About the ever-present pain she takes a haughtier tone than McVie:
“It's only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully
To the sound of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat drives you mad
…
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
And have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness
Like a heartbeat drives you mad”
I think what makes Fleetwood Mac so special is that because they engaged in such an torrid incestuous, and emotional drama, each member is like a different facet of the same pain. Lindsey Buckingham is able to answer Stevie Nicks’ exploration of loneliness with the more masculine Go Your Own Way and make it all feel like a cohesive story, saying:
“If I could
Baby, I'd give you my world
How can I
When you won't take it from me?
You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day”
This era of Fleetwood Mac is representative of a broader musical trend that happened at the time. Music shifted in focus from being either pure entertainment or making a broader cultural statement to being something altogether more introspective and self-indulgent. That shift is reflected in broader American culture as individualism lost its ruggedness and materialism saw a sharp rise. There's a case to be made for an unbroken line between the heights of Fleetwood Mac and modern cultural output where everything is performative and nothing is off limits (think Taylor Swift).
The only song I’m really missing here is The Chain, which might be the group’s best song, if not their biggest hit. It is the only Fleetwood Mac song penned by the whole group, and I think it would serve to tie the thing together. In my version, Fixing ‘Greatest Hits,’ I would replace Hold Me with The Chain. You may ask, why? Didn’t Hold Me peak at No. 4 on the Billboard 100 where The Chain didn’t even show? Why not replace one of the previously unreleased tracks like As Long As You Follow or No Questions Asked? Two reasons. Hold Me undeservingly takes the anchor track on this album. The only other place for The Chain is the bonus track, but while The Chain sits on the cusp of rage and power, No Questions Asked is centered firmly in love. Better to end on love.
$24.98 at Amazon
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