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Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, UK Articles

Fleetwood Mac’s Top 10 most downloaded tracks in the UK

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By Dan Lane

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours looks set to re-enter the Official Albums Chart Top 10 this Sunday, 35 years after if first reached Number 1 in the UK. To celebrate, OfficialCharts.com reveal the band’s Top 10 most downloaded tracks of all time – the Official Fleetwood Mac Digital Top 10.

As Fleetwood Mac gear up to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the seminal 1977 album Rumours going to Number 1 in the UK, a series of deluxe re-issues of the record look set to put it back in the Official Albums Chart Top 10 this Sunday.

Released in February 1977, Rumours debuted at Number 7 on the Official Albums Chart on February 27 of that year (week ending March 5) – but it wasn’t until nearly a year later, on January 22, 1978 (week ending January 28), that Rumours finally peaked at Number 1, giving the Anglo-American band their first UK chart topping album.

To date, Rumours has spent a staggering 493 weeks on the Official Albums Chart, making it the most charting album in British history (Queen’s Greatest Hits is in second place with 484 weeks, with Bat Out Of Hell by Meat Loaf in third place with 474 weeks). Rumours is also one of the Top 20 biggest selling albums of all time.

Some 36 years after it was first released, Rumours’ appeal seems unwavering, transcending multiple generations of music fans and indeed musical formats. Understandably, tracks from Rumours make up half of Fleetwood Mac’s Top 10 most downloaded tracks.

Go Your Own Way tops the Official Fleetwood Mac Digital Top 10, with The Chain (widely recognised by many as the theme of BBC TV’s motor racing coverage) a very close second. Dreams, which has been covered by everyone from The Corrs to the cast of Glee, is at Number 5, while Don’t Stop (Number 8) and Songbird (Number 10) also make the Top 10.

Official Charts Company managing director Martin Talbot says:

“As someone who grew up with Rumours on the family stereo, it is great to see it back in the Official Albums Chart again – and our Official Fleetwood Mac Digital Top 10 really highlights just how timeless this iconic British band’s music is.”

The Official Fleetwood Mac Digital Top 10

1 GO YOUR OWN WAY
2 THE CHAIN
3 EVERYWHERE
4 LITTLE LIES
5 DREAMS
6 ALBATROSS
7 LANDSLIDE
8 DON’T STOP
9 BIG LOVE
10 SONGBIRD

© 2013 The Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.

In related news, Fleetwood Mac (featuring Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) are set to embark on a 34-date reunion tour of the US in April, with a series of as-yet-unannounced European and Australasian dates set to follow.

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Tour Info, UK Articles

Back with Second Hand News: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours

The Oxford Student Online
By Oliver Hancock

I remember reading an issue of Rolling Stone a few years ago about the ‘100 Greatest Albums of All Time’, and thinking about how these countdowns might differ in different magazines – NME’s top 10 will almost certainly not be the same as Kerrang’s.article-0-0B078D75000005DC-182_306x327

Getting down to the top 10, all the usual candidates I would expect in modern music magazines were there (The Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc.), but the number 4 on the list was an album I’d never really heard of: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. I wondered how an album considered canonical by one of the world’s biggest music magazines could have passed me by; why all the ‘Top 100…’ articles I’d read in British magazines could have ignored Rumours in the top bracket. The album itself was popular and critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, unsurprising given the Anglo-American core of the band, and yet an avid reader of British music magazines in the 21st-century might never consider Fleetwood Mac’s seminal LP in the same bracket as many of the well-trodden ‘classic’ albums. Continue reading Back with Second Hand News: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours →

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Tour Info, UK Articles

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Why the under-30s still love it

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Why the under-30s still love it

Telegraph.co.uk

Ahead of the release of a special boxset edition of the Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, James Lachno argues that the 1977 album has survived better than its punk rivals.

 

Rumours is beloved by twentysomething partygoers, and the hippest bands around all want to sound like Fleetwood Mac

This Monday, a three-disc, 35th anniversary boxset of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece Rumours will be released. There’s never been a better time to celebrate the band and their gorgeous 11th album, both of which are more
popular and fashionable than ever. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Why the under-30s still love it →

Fleetwood Mac, Go Your Own Way, Release Info, Tour Info, UK Articles

35 years of Rumours: Will a reissue add to Fleetwood Mac’s classic album?

Scotmans.com
Sunday 27 January 2013
STUART BATHGATE

It’s 35 years since the release of Rumours, but will yet another version add anything to the classic, asks Stuart Bathgate, or are reissues just a cynical ploy by record companies to capitalise on our memories?

Photo by Sam Emerson
Photo by Sam Emerson

YOU bought the record. You’ve got the CD. Perhaps, in the early days of the Walkman, you also had it on tape. All in all, you might well reckon you’ve done your bit by Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 album. Bought it, bought it again, bought it a third time and given at least two versions to the charity shop.

Ah, but you don’t have the expanded or the deluxe 35th anniversary edition, do you? And you want them, don’t you? Or at least, that’s what the band and their record company hope.

More than 40 million copies of Rumours, in its various guises, have been sold to date, and now the aim is to shift a few more when those two new versions are released on Monday. Which, incidentally, as you may have noticed, is almost a month after the 35th anniversary ended. They always did take their time getting projects finished, Fleetwood Mac, and this one has been no different. Continue reading 35 years of Rumours: Will a reissue add to Fleetwood Mac’s classic album? →

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Tour Info, UK Articles

Album review: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Super Deluxe Remastered Version (Rhino)

Album review: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Super Deluxe Remastered Version (Rhino)

ANDY GILL
FRIDAY 25 JANUARY 2013
THE INDEPENDENT UK
star number 1star number 2star number 3star number 4star number 5
Pitch-perfect pop before they went their own way
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It speaks volumes about the enduring quality of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – here repackaged in an expanded heritage edition comprising, in its most lavish format, four CDs, one DVD and audiophile vinyl album – that not even the twin taints of appropriation as Top Gear theme and political anthem have managed to diminish its appeal. It remains one of pop’s most impervious generational touchstones.

Rumours represents, along with The Eagles Greatest Hits, the high-water mark of America’s Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism. Its very sound, with those winsome melodies, those West Coast harmonies, and that rhythm section lagging fractionally, imperceptibly behind the beat conjures a fantasy world of luxurious, liberal excess and Californication, captured with sleek perfection.

The album’s story is well-known now, rock’s premier case of strife bringing forth sweetness, as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham batted the tattered remnants of their relationship back and forth in song. She had only to refer to “thunder” in “Dreams”, for him to snipe back “You can roll like thunder” in “Go Your Own Way” – but both songs are equally sublime, as too are Christine McVie’s attempts to cheer the troops up in songs like “Don’t Stop” and “You Make Loving Fun”.

Heaven only knows how they managed to remain focused (and civil) enough to bring the project to such glorious fruition, a process here sketched out across two CDs of revealing demos and outtakes, the best of which may be Buckingham’s exquisite “Brushes” – the original demo for “Never Going Back Again” – on which his delicate, lace-like threads of multi-tracked guitar intertwine with the crystalline sparkle of dulcimer or harp.

Hearing the band develop its definitive voice in these performances, one’s interest is sharply piqued for the imminent reformation tour: it may not be as intriguing as Bowie’s comeback, but there’s a peculiar magic in operation here that deserves treasuring.

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Tour Info, UK Articles

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | The Times

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours

Will Hodgkinson
January 25 2013

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Thirty-five years after its release, we can revel in the most accomplished slice of adult contemporary rock ever made

Rumours is unique in being a 20th-century masterpiece that did more damage to rock’n’roll than any other album in the history of music. It’s impossible not to revel in the songcraft of Christine McVie’s Songbird. Lindsey Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way is the ultimate drivetime anthem. The Chain is the last word in soft rock excitement and the slick studio sophistication of Don’t Stop is too tasty to resist. But Rumours is also the 30 million-selling monster that, by making it OK to be a moaning, self-obsessed rock star peddling commoditised emotion to the record-buying public, set in motion a terrible chain of events. We can blame Rumours for the vast majority of horrific middle-of-the-road rock that blighted the 1980s, not to mention any number of bland singer-songwriters aiming to sound intimate while also wishing to appeal to the widest demographic possible, and we can thank it for helping make punk happen as a reaction to it.

Now, 35 years after its release, on a three-CD special edition or, better still, a 45rpm vinyl double album that expands the clarity of this exercise in sonic science, we can revel in the simple pleasure of listening to the most accomplished slice of adult contemporary rock ever made. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | The Times →

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Tour Info, UK Articles

It’s still MACnificent! 35 years on, classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours is back with a twist

Daily Mail Online
By ADRIAN THRILLS
24 January 2013

FLEETWOOD MAC: Rumours (Rhino, Expanded and Deluxe editions)
Verdict: Rock’s greatest soap opera revisited    Rating: 5 Star Rating

article-0-0B078D75000005DC-182_306x327Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours wasn’t so much a rock record as a fully fledged soap opera.

Fuelled by drugs and  tangled romances, it chronicled the five members’ raw emotions with classic songs like Don’t Stop, Go Your Own Way and Dreams.

Keyboardist Christine McVie described the sessions as a ‘nightly cocktail party’ while drummer Mick Fleetwood said they were ‘crucifyingly difficult’.

But the Anglo-Americans pressed on to finish ‘the most important album we ever made’.

On Monday — 35 years after its original release — Rumours is back.  The landmark album is being re-issued in two packages with bonus material, out-takes and live recordings to mark the band’s reunion tour (UK dates are expected to be in late September).

A three-CD version, selling at around £12, contains the original album, bonus tracks and the live material. For Mac maniacs, a ‘deluxe’ edition, close to £50, is  bolstered by further outtakes, a DVD and copy of Rumours on vinyl. Continue reading It’s still MACnificent! 35 years on, classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours is back with a twist →

Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, Tour Info, UK Articles

Christine McVie To Re-Join Fleetwood Mac?

Christine McVie To Re-Join Fleetwood Mac?

Thursday, January 24th 2013 11:30

Planet Rock can exclusively reveal that Mick Fleetwood is trying to persuade Christine McVie to re-join Fleetwood Mac. 

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McVie retired from the band in the late 1990’s and hasn’t performed with them since.

He also confirmed that Fleetwood Mac will announce the European leg of their forthcoming world tour in the coming weeks.

Mick told Planet Rock’s Darren Redick, “I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with my sister, Christine McVie, and that’s sort of a lovely, nice thing to be doing. Getting her out of the English cold there for a few weeks …and me and Chris will be flying back [to Mick’s home in Hawaii] after my work in London”.

Darren asked Mick if Christine would be with them for their shows in the UK and Mick went on to say, “I would love that and I would welcome that as we all would and I truly hope that happens. And it might just be the case and I will take that to the fore and be reminded that a lot of people would love to see that happen. It would be an emotionally charged moment that would be lovely to have happen. And I know everyone in the band would welcome that. So you never know!”.

As far as the world tour goes, Fleetwood Mac look likely to be in England by the autumn. Mick said, “We’re going to be touring in September and October in England and in Europe, we’re going on a massive world tour, which is getting more massive by the second, and those shows will be announced in the next few days”.

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info, UK Articles

Stevie Nicks: the return of Fleetwood Mac

The Guardian UK
Caspar Llewellyn Smith
Jan 12th 2013

Stevie Nicks’s tumultuous life as a rock queen led her to addiction, heartbreak and “insanity”. As Fleetwood Mac reunite, she tells Caspar Llewellyn Smith why she’s going back for more
Stevie NicksStevie Nicks: ‘I always wanted to be a songwriter: I told my parents when I was 15 and a half.’ Photograph: Jason Bell/Camera Press

 

 

Before I meet Stevie Nicks, I hear her. She is downstairs somewhere in the houseshe’s renting on the beach in Malibu – a short drive, traffic allowing, up the Californian coastline from the two homes she owns in LA – and looking for her dark glasses. It’s early eveninginDecember and has long since turned dark outside, but if you’re the ultimate rock goddess – NME‘s recent description, testament to an ongoing revaluation of interest inFleetwood Mac among the younger generation – wearing shades at night goes with the territory.

Scented candles are spaced throughout the room and there’s a well-thumbed copy of the first book inThe TwilightSaga on a side table – signsthat suggest that the 64-year-old singer is comfortably in residence. Plus there’s her Yorkshire terrier, getting stuck continuously under my feet. But, as Nicks says, when all five feet one-and-a-half inches of her does emerge at the top of the stairs, she can’t seem to settle.

In factshe shouldn’t be here at all (and wasn’t planning any interviews), but on holiday in the Florida Keys she was getting bitten to death by bugs and, besides, felt bored. Going home to either of her places in the city wasn’t an option because right now she’s “making a molecular change”: parking her solo career, which saw her tour the world with her solo album In Your Dreamsfor the past two years, and getting ready for the return of the Mac.

Instead she asked to see if this place, which she’d rented previously, was available. “I’m trying to rest and it’s really hard to rest because in either one of my own houses I feel like I should be working,” she explains. “I’ve been coming here off and on for nearly 10 years and there’s absolutely nothing for me to do except draw or sit and write poetry or bring the electric piano down.” Problem is, “I’ve been here since Tuesday and I haven’t managed yet to actually come up here at three in the afternoon and go sit on that miserable couch and draw for a few hours – because that’s when I know I’ve made a change.”

Despite the homely touches, the house looks perfectly nondescript from theoutside, and it’s modestly apportioned by the standards of LA rock aristocracy. But then Nicks doesn’t play the diva either – kooky fan of fantasy, yes (her fondness for the oeuvre of Stephenie Meyer and liking for US fantasy TV series Game of Thrones fits right into that), but not the figure who insisted during Fleetwood Mac‘s Tusk tour that every hotel room she stayed in be painted pink and must house a white piano.

It is now 40 years since her first album, Buckingham Nicks – the fruit of her relationship, both musical and romantic, with Lindsey Buckingham – and life is coming full circle. Later this month, the most classic of all Fleetwood Mac albums, Rumours, gets the full reissue treatment, and the band will hit the road again for a US tour that will also likely come to Europe. (Of the rumours that they’ll headline Glastonbury, Nicks is noncommittal, though she does say she’d love to do it.) Continue reading Stevie Nicks: the return of Fleetwood Mac →

Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, UK Articles

Christine McVie at Peace With Fleetwood Mac Past

CHRISTINE MCVIE AT PEACE WITH FLEETWOOD MAC PAST

Christine McVie enjoyed a wild ride as a member of Fleetwood Mac, but nowadays the retired rocker prefers a quiet life out of the spotlight. In a new interview, the legendary singer and songwriter shares her fond and not-so-fond memories of the past, and says she has no problem with her former bandmates moving on without her.

McVie looks back on the landmark album ‘Rumours’ in a rare public interview with Mojo magazine. Released in February of 1977, the album spawned a string of commercial hits including ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘The Chain’ and ‘Dreams.’ McVie contributed ‘You Make Loving Fun,’ ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘Oh Daddy’ and ‘Songbird,’ but she recalls that her rocky relationship with ex-husband John McVie, as well as the strain between Lindsey Buckingham and Steve Nicks, made for a stressful situation.

“John and I have long since made friends, and I’m sure Stevie and Lindsey have as well. But I am often still flabbergasted at how the hell we managed to make [the album] in the first place,” McVie says incredulously. “But that was what tied us together — we knew that the music was good. The chemistry was such that we brought the best out in each other.”

Still, McVie acknowledges that the group’s crazy, drug-fueled antics impacted the recording sessions. “They were wild days,” she admits. “I can’t deny there was a lot of lunacy in the studio. But Stevie and I rented a condominium in Sausalito to get away from all of that. It was the boys who all stayed at the Record Plant house. So that’s where all the madness was happening.”

The musician still enjoys the music on ‘Rumours’ after all these years. “It was a real pleasure to listen to it again,” she states. “I’ve had it lying around but not listened to it for years. It’s like if you live next door to Buckingham Palace, you don’t go and look at it every day.”

McVie departed Fleetwood Mac in 1998, returned to her native England and has since kept a very low profile. She has seen her old band in concert a few times since, though she has steadfastly not joined them onstage. “I have a really good time when I go. I can stand at the sound board and watch them sweat,” she says with a laugh. “They do my songs, ‘Don’t Stop’ and ‘World Turning,’ but they are limited to what they can do of mine. I think they tried ‘You Make Loving Fun,’ but I don’t think the sound of their vocals were right. But I wish them well.”

McVie appears to have no future plan to return to music, and she says she has shelved any plans she once had of opening a restaurant, which was part of her intent when she left the group. “I didn’t open a restaurant but I did go to a few cooking schools,” she says, adding, “It was too much like hard work!”