'I went my own way': Are Fleetwood Mac really that good?

By Daisy Lacey, Fourth year Comparative Literatures and Cultures

Having spent my childhood and the transitioning of adulthood surrounded by my dinosaur uncles of the 1960s onwards, I have been given a vast education on what they deem good music, most of which I agree with, some that I don’t.

They were also not afraid to educate me on the bad music of their era. One band in particular that, through their music appreciation programme, has me questioning their success and appeal since they began. This band is Fleetwood Mac, a band they could not stand and, nor can I. Please find enclosed a list of expletive free reasons as to why I think they are overrated!

I will make one admission and say that I can tolerate their stuff pre Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. The Peter Green days are arguably their best. The music they made after that is just soulless, mediocre trash that should be embarrassed to be known as a classic.

Commencing with the twittering tuneless witch known as Stevie Nicks, her out of tune, urinary tract infection vocals leave me looking for the nearest blackboard for me to scrape my fingernails down. She not only sounds like she’s miserable but looks it too. I mean, there are some females who pull off the cool, sullen gaze when in a rock band, them even being referred to as a rock band is laughable. Her miserable face looks like that of a bratty Verruca Salt. The fact that she calls the equally talentless Harry Styles her adopted son just adds to my lack of musical respect for the woman.

Then that album, that one album “EVERYBODY LOVES”, their worst album in my opinion is Rumours. Such a middle of the road LP that expresses everything I hate about soft rock/ borderline pop music. The songs are only catchy through irritation. I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ve turned more into Verruca Salt than the band’s female lead, yelling and shouting in my drunken state at my drunken friends to turn the diatribe off and for them to sing ‘YOU CAN GO YOUR OWN WAY’. As much as I adore my friends, I ‘went my own way’ when I contradicted their adoration of Rumours.

Their lyrics are that uninventive that those who consider themselves ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’, will go and get their meaningless lyrics tattooed on their arms, the hit on google images is rather high up the list.

Now, to end this grumpy old woman think piece on why I cannot stand the mediocrity of Fleetwood Mac, I would like to say to those who do love them, carry on listening to them, just do not expect me to try and force myself to listen. There is no worse feeling for a hater of certain music to suffer the torture of being told ‘you are entitled to your opinion, your opinion is wrong though’. No opinion is wrong, this is my opinion when all said and done, I can’t make it a fact as much as I would like to. If you like Fleetwood Mac in the Stevie Nicks years, great. Just leave me alone to listen to Black Magic Woman on my own and then listen to  Carlos Santana do a better job on it.