Rock · Soft Rock · Pop
The soap opera you could dance to — a band that turned heartbreak into the biggest-selling record of its age.
The band that made heartbreak harmonious
Fleetwood Mac began in 1967 as a British blues band, founded by guitarist Peter Green with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. But the Mac the world knows was born in 1975, when Fleetwood invited California duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to join — completing a five-piece with Christine McVie that would become one of the defining lineups in rock history. Their 1975 self-titled album went to number one; what followed went to legend.
Rumours (1977) was recorded while the band was falling apart in the most public way imaginable: the McVies divorcing, Buckingham and Nicks splitting, Fleetwood’s marriage collapsing. Instead of imploding, they turned the wreckage into forty million sales — one of the best-selling albums ever made — and a run of singles that still defines the soft-rock era. The miracle of Rumours is that it sounds like joy; listen closer and it’s five people singing through tears.
The band refused to repeat the formula. 1979’s Tusk was a wilful, experimental double album; 1982’s Mirage polished the sound for a new decade. Through every fracture and reunion, the chemistry of those five voices — Nicks’s witchy contralto, Christine McVie’s warm clarity, Buckingham’s edgy tenor — remained unmistakable.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, Fleetwood Mac endures as proof of pop’s strangest alchemy: that the most beautiful harmonies can come from the most broken hearts.