Top 10 Best Fleetwood Mac Songs For Your Playlist

We list some of the best Fleetwood Mac songs you can add to your favorite playlist. The rock band is primarily a British blues band. Later on, they adapted a more pop rock sound with the addition of new band members. Their most enduring hits tend to scan as romantic soft-pop — couching fiery, passionate lyrics in gauzy keyboards, honeyed guitars and soothing grooves. Decades later, Fleetwood Mac still continue to captivate audiences.

Bio: Who is Fleetwood Mac?

Fleetwood Mac are a British/American rock band formed in 1967. The rock band was founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, before bassist John McVie joined the lineup for their self-titled debut album. The band got it’s name from one of the original band member Peter Green who combined the surnames of two other members, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. From the band’s inception through the end of 1974, no incarnation of Fleetwood Mac lasted as long as two years. The only member present in the band from the very beginning is its namesake drummer Mick Fleetwood. Bassist John McVie, despite his giving part of his name to the band, did not play on their first single nor at their first concerts. Keyboardist Christine Perfect (later known as Christine McVie), who contributed as a session musician from the second album, married McVie and joined in 1970. Their 1975 self-titled album, Fleetwood Mac, reached No. 1 in the United States. By the mid-’70s, Fleetwood Mac had relocated to California, where they added the soft rock duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to their lineup. Rumours (1977), Fleetwood Mac’s second album after the arrival of Buckingham and Nicks. Their second album became a success, topping the American and British charts and generating the Top Ten singles “Go Your Own Way,” “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” and “You Make Loving Fun.” It would eventually sell over 17 million copies in the U.S. alone, making it the second biggest-selling album of all time. It also won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. However, over they years, Fleetwood Mac had seen just about as many people come and go. Relationship drama between the members plagued the band while they recorded their album Rumors, which resulted in the use of drugs and alcohol to cope with the tumultuous environment. Despite their myriad of affairs and betrayals, Fleetwood Mac has enjoyed a lasting career of over 50 years.

Top 10 Best Fleetwood Mac Songs

1. Dreams

“Dreams” is part of Fleetwood Mac’s eleventh studio album, Rumours (1977). The song sold more than one million copies in the U.S. and reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Nicks recalled writing the song in an interview with Blender, “It was a black-and-red room, with a sunken pit in the middle where there was a piano, and a big black-velvet bed with Victorian drapes. I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me. I found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette on and wrote ‘Dreams’ in about 10 minutes. Right away I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat, because that made it a little unusual for me.” The song also went viral in 2020 during the pandemic when Nathan Apodaca, aka 420doggface208, found himself thrust into the spotlight after he posted a TikTok of himself skateboarding along a highway while sipping on a full-sized bottle of Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice and singing along to the Fleetwood Mac classic.

Stream “Dreams”

2. Go Your Own Way

“Go Your Own Way” was written by Lindsey Buckingham about his relationship with Stevie Nicks. Recently, Mr. Buckingham looked back on the song and the events that inspired the words and music. “I began writing “Go Your Own Way” in hotel rooms during Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 tour. By then, Stevie Nicks and I had broken up. We’d been sort of off and on, and the song I started was about us becoming alienated from each other,” says Lindasy. In the time that the song was written, all five members of Fleetwood Mac had broken relationships; Christine McVie and John McVie divorces, Mick Fleetwood divorced from his wife for the second time, and of course, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham ended their relationship. When the song was released in December 1976, it was the first single from the band’s Rumours album and climbed to No. 10 on Billboard’s pop chart, where it remained for 15 weeks.

Stream “Go Your Own Way”

3. The Chain

“The Chain” was released on the 1977 album Rumours. It was created by combining segments from previously rejected songs and therefore is the only song on the album to be credited to all five band members of the time. On the song, John McVie’s bass line marks the end of the tortured lyrics about personal relationships imploding and launches us into a free-spirited musical exploration of what it might feel like to experience complete relief after someone’s stopped pushing your heart through a shredder. Nonetheless, Fleetwood Mac’s ability to find gorgeous, fragile beauty in even dark days is extremely relatable. They can be moody and melancholy — but their music never loses its optimism.

Stream “The Chain”

4. Gypsy

Even though “Gypsy” came out in the summer of ’82 on Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage album, the song and its sound had a late ’70s vibe. Stevie Nicks wrote the song in 1978 and ’79 but it wasn’t recorded and released until 1982. It did fairly well on the charts as the second single from the album, Mirage. The song has a driving beat, and its lyrics look back at being a free spirit and making your own way. Fleetwood Mac also released a music video to the song. Directed by Russell Mulcahy, the video was the highest-budget music video ever produced at the time, using several locations, many different costumes and dancers. The group is shown in a forest dancing, with a background of mountains and singing to the camera. At the time, it was also incredibly challenging to complete because of the relationship drama that always seemed to be running through the band.

Stream “Gypsy”

5. Seven Wonders

“Seven Wonders” was part of the band’s fourteenth studio album, Tango in the Night (1987). The song received positive reviews with Niall McMurray saying “‘Seven Wonders’ was the anointed Stevie Nicks smash featuring all the elements we’ve come to expect from her – melodic, gargly, mildly overblown and largely unintelligible – and in 1987 this was just fine.” Fleetwood Mac also unearthed an early version of “Seven Wonders” that appeared on the reissue of Tango In the Night. The outtake moves at a steadier pace than the version that appeared on the group’s 1987 album, opening with a gloomy bass synth and an acoustic guitar picking the lead melody that would become a sparkling keyboard riff on the final version. The stripped down take also features a thrilling performance from Stevie Nicks, who closes the song with an array of bubbly vocal runs and ad-libs.

Stream “Seven Wonders”

6. Landslide

“Landslide” was first featured on the band’s self-titled album Fleetwood Mac (1975). The original recording also appears on the compilation albums 25 Years – The Chain (1992) and The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac (2002). The song reached No. 51 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Stevie Nicks wrote the lyrics for Landslide in response to being dropped from her record label back in the early 70s. The song shares her frustration of briefly tasting success, feeling it ripped away, and having to resurrect the courage to push onward. In response to the setback, she gave herself six months, and if nothing developed she was moving back home, and returning to school. Two months later, both she and her then boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham, got a call from Mic Fleetwood to join Fleetwood Mac, and the rest is music history.

Stream “Landslide”

7. Rhiannon

“Rhiannon” peaked at No. 11 on the U.S. charts in June 1976, and at no. 46 in the UK singles chart. Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac found the name Rhiannon in a random book at a friend’s house in 1974, according to an interview with Louder. Rhiannon is the name of a Welsh goddess. According to myth, Rhiannon, the goddess of fertility and the moon, shuns a god and marries a mortal man. That god then frames her for the murder of her own son, and she is forced to stand at the entrance to a city and tell everyone entering that she killed her child. At the time, Nicks was recording as Buckingham-Nicks and about to release the track on their second album, but they joined Fleetwood Mac instead and recorded it with them.

Stream “Rhiannon”

8. Everywhere

“Everywhere” was part of Fleetwood Mac’s fourteenth studio album, Tango in the Night (1987). The single peaked at No.14 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart. Sabrina Chitty said of the song’s meaning that “‘Everywhere’ is a song by Fleetwood Mac from their fourteenth studio album, Tango in the Night (1987). It can be said that from the vocalist’s perspective, the lyrics of “Everywhere” speak to Christine McVie being in the euphoric stage of a romance.” In a 2019 BBC Four documentary, Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, Richard Dashut, the co-producer of Tango in the Night, briefly talked about the intro: “That’s a half-speed acoustic guitar and electric combined”. McVie herself also talked about the song’s intro: “He [Buckingham] slowed the tape down, really slowly, and played the parts slowly, and then when it came to the right speed, it sounded bloody amazing”.

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9. Little Lies

“Little Lies” was the third single from 1987’s Tango In The Night, the band’s first album in five years. McVie wrote the track with her husband Eddy Quintela, who she had married just before Tango In The Night was released. The song wasn’t necessarily written about her relationship with Quintela; it’s more likely to be about her failed relationship with her first husband and bandmate, Mick Fleetwood. McVie said of the lyrics: “The idea of the lyric is, if I had the chance, I’d do it differently next time. But since I can’t, just carry on lying to me and I’ll believe, even though I know you’re lying.” Fleetwood Mac’s inter-band relationships were the subject of much press surrounding the band, and this, coupled with the fact that they were in relationships with one another at all, created many tensions within the group. On its release, the single reached number one for four weeks on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1987.

Stream “Little Lies”

10. Say You Love Me

“Say You Love Me” is part of Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 self-titled album. The song peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, and remains one of the band’s most recognizable songs. Christine McVie penned “Say You Love Me” while married to John McVie. Fast-forward to today and the song remains one of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits. Its upbeat rhythm—combined with McVie’s vocals, catchy melody and the incredible guitar solo—makes it a popular wedding song for post-dinner grooving. “I started playing ‘Say You Love Me’ . . . and fell right into it,” McVie recalled. “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. My skin turned to goose flesh, and I wondered how long this feeling was going to last.”

Stream “Say You Love Me”

Honorable mentions

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