The Fleetwood Mac songs that don't feature Stevie Nicks on vocals

11 days ago

Far Out Magazine

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The Fleetwood Mac songs that dont feature Stevie Nicks on vocals

Witchy songwriter and frontwoman Stevie Nicks was integral to the success of Fleetwood Mac, but she didn't appear on every one of their soft-rock hits.

(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)

Fri 1 November 2024 21:00, UK

Stevie Nicks isn’t an original member of Fleetwood Mac. She didn’t found the soft-rock outfit like Peter Green or lend her surname to the band like John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. She didn’t even contribute to their debut album. Nick joined late, being recruited into the lineup with her romantic and creative partner Lindsey Buckingham after the failure of their previous project. And yet, Nicks has somehow become the most iconic and influential member of the beloved rock band.

Perhaps it’s due to her skill with a pen. Nicks would go on to become one of the leading songwriters in Fleetwood Mac, alongside Buckingham and keyboard player Christine McVie, contributing some of the band’s biggest hits. She created standout tracks such as ‘Dreams’ and ‘Rhiannon’, songs that paired her personal experiences of loving and losing with gorgeous harmonies and soft strums.

Or perhaps it was her presence on stage that endeared her to audiences, the way she confidently took up the microphone, singing songs about heartbreak while Buckingham, the subject of those songs, stood mere metres away from her. Perhaps it was her witchy fashion sense, her bright personality, or perhaps it was a combination of all of the above. Whatever the reason, Nicks became essential to the success of Fleetwood Mac.

But Nicks wasn’t always there to lead the band into soft-rock success. She contributed to a wide range of songs in between her induction into Fleetwood Mac in the early 1970s and their final full-length release in 2003. She often took up lead vocals or provided gorgeous backing harmonies for Buckingham and McVie, but her pipes didn’t feature on every single song they released. In fact, there are a number of Fleetwood Mac songs that are completely devoid of Nicks’ vocals.

The tracklisting for Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opus, Rumours, is steeped in the influence of Nicks’ songwriting and her personal relationships, but it does include two songs on which she doesn’t feature: Buckingham’s ‘Never Going Back Again’ and McVie’s ‘Songbird’. They’re two brilliant songs, each slightly more intimate to the songwriter, and each proving that Fleetwood Mac could thrive without Nicks.

The follow-up to Rumours, 1979’s Tusk, featured far less of Nicks’ influence. It was Buckingham’s baby, his chance to experiment more, to push Fleetwood Mac into strange new realms of post-punk, but Nicks was left behind in the process. She’s completely missing on tracks like ‘Not That Funny’ and ‘The Ledge’, which only adds to the band’s slightly different sound on this record.

Nicks also didn’t feature on the title track for their 1987 studio record, Tango in the Night, although every other member of the band did. There are a number of other later tracks that Nicks was absent from, such as ‘What’s the World Coming To?’ and ‘Murrow Turning Over in His Grave’, and she also didn’t appear on any of the band’s 1995 record, Time.

There are certain songs that Nicks doesn’t appear on that seem to serve as proof that Fleetwood Mac could pen and perform hits without their witchy frontwoman, but there are others that sorely miss her influence. Fortunately, we don’t have to imagine a world where Nicks wasn’t a part of Fleetwood Mac.

Below, we’ve collated a list of the songs that don’t feature Nicks behind the microphone, excluding tracks released before she joined the band and Time.