Top 15 Fleetwood Mac Solo Songs

With three strong singers and songwriters during their peak commercial years, Fleetwood Mac could never be their sole vessel of expression. Outside projects were common before and after the onetime British blues band became pop-rock royalty when they relocated to the U.S. and recruited a pair of Americans to their latest lineup.

While Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and to an extent the band’s longtime ace in the hole Christine McVie, were bound to be the most visible members with solo projects, a long parade of artists released outside projects before, during and after their time in the band.

In the below list of the Top 15 Fleetwood Mac Solo Songs, the three previously mentioned artists dominate, as to be expected, but they’re just part of the story. Past singer and guitarist Bob Welch is also here, as is future member Dave Mason, who had a long, prestigious career before briefly joining the band during one of its rare commercial droughts. Together, they made some of the most enduring music in rock history, but on their own, they were often as brilliant.

15. Lindsey Buckingham, “Slow Dancing”
From: Go Insane (1984)

Buckingham’s second solo album, 1984’s Go Insane, broke even further from his Fleetwood Mac expectations. Heavily inspired by new wave and synth-pop, the album’s use of synthesizers and other electronic sounds stamps it as a product of the era, but the dance groove of “Slow Dancing” reflects the artist’s fearless steps into the future, which dates to his attentive approach to Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 double LP Tusk.

 

14. Dave Mason, “We Just Disagree”
From: Let It Flow (1977)

Dave Mason had played with Traffic, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and scores of others before he joined the Buckingham- and Nicks-free Fleetwood Mac for a tour and album in 1995. Both were huge disappointments; the LP, Time, failed even to make the Top 200. Mason charted his biggest solo single with “We Just Disagree,” which stopped just outside the Top 10, in 1977, right when Rumours was on everybody’s lips.

 

13. Christine McVie, “Got a Hold on Me”
From: Christine McVie (1984)

Christine McVie released her first solo album in 1970 when she was still known as Christine Perfect. Fourteen years later, and in between the superstar era of Fleetwood Mac albums, she put out a second. Simply titled Christine McVie and tethered to the warm, rich music she contributed to the band, the album’s highlight “Got a Hold on Me” – with Buckingham on guitar and Steve Winwood on synths – is a dead ringer for Mac.

 

12. Stevie Nicks with Don Henley, “Leather and Lace”
From: Bella Donna (1981)

Stevie Nicks and Don Henley‘s relationship lasted for several months during Rumours‘ marathon run on the charts, but they were broken up for three years when their Bella Donna duet “Leather and Lace” came out. Written for Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, Nicks reclaimed her song after the country duo passed (but not before they borrowed its name for an album title). It was her second consecutive Top 10 solo hit.

 

11. Bob Welch, “Ebony Eyes”
From: French Kiss (1977)

After leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1974, Bob Welch cofounded the band Paris with former members of Jethro Tull and the Nazz. They didn’t last long, so in 1977 Welch released his first solo album with help from a few of his old Mac bandmates (he later opened for them on some of their big late-’70s tours). The LP’s first single, “Sentimental Lady,” reached the Top 10; the disco-groove follow-up “Ebony Eyes” just missed at No. 14.

 

10. Stevie Nicks, “Talk to Me”
From: Rock a Little (1985)

One of two songs on her third solo album she didn’t have a hand in writing, “Talk to Me” was Nicks’ fourth Top 10 hit and highest charter since “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” peaked at No. 3 in 1981. Written by Chas Sandford, who coproduced and played most of the instruments, “Talk to Me” arrived during a five-year recording hiatus for Fleetwood Mac, during which everyone but bassist John McVie released a solo project.

 

9. Lindsey Buckingham, “Holiday Road”
From: National Lampoon’s Vacation Original Motion Picture Sound Track (1983)

With one solo album out and the release of Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage a year earlier, Lindsey Buckingham recorded a one-off single for the 1983 soundtrack to National Lampoon’s Vacation. “Holiday Road” plays over the opening titles and returned for three sequels. Even though the song stalled at No. 82, the breezy 131-second track has turned into one of Buckingham’s most popular solo tunes and continued to play live.

 

READ MORE: Ranking Every Classic Era Fleetwood Mac Song

 

8. Lindsey Buckingham, “Go Insane”
From: Go Insane (1984)

Seven years after the fact, Lindsey Buckingham was still struggling over his breakup with Stevie Nicks, seeking closure. The title track to his second solo album Go Insane explores some of these lingering issues, as Buckingham – going the one-man-band route with help from bassist Bryant Simpson – piles on background songs to add to the thematic disorder. A key track to an LP that eyes the future while anchored to the past.

 

7. Bob Welch, “Sentimental Lady”
From: French Kiss (1977)

Welch had recorded “Sentimental Lady” before his solo version hit the Top 10 in 1977 – on Fleetwood Mac’s 1972 album Bare Trees. His debut album as a solo artist, French Kiss, included assistance from Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham, all of whom appear on his dreamier, poppier take on “Sentimental Lady.” The follow-up album two years later, Three Hearts, added Stevie Nicks.

 

6. Dave Mason, “Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave”
From: Alone Together (1970)

Following his exit from Traffic, Dave Mason lined up an all-star group to back him on his debut solo album, including Leon Russell, Jim Capaldi, Jim Gordon and Bonnie Bramlett, whose daughter Bekka would play with Mason during their brief run in Fleetwood Mac in the mid-’90s. A highlight of 1970’s Alone Together, “Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave” is gently rolling folk rock with stinging wah guitar.

 

5. Stevie Nicks, “Rooms on Fire”
From: The Other Side of the Mirror (1989)

Fleetwood Mac was at a crossroads when Nicks released her fourth solo album in 1989, The Other Side of the Mirror. Lindsey Buckingham, the band’s creative center since 1975, had left the group and its future in question. So she focused on a new LP, Top 10 in the States and her biggest solo record in the U.K. Highlight “Rooms on Fire” confronts Nicks’ conflicts as a single, childless woman and eventual acceptance.

 

4. Lindsey Buckingham, “Trouble”
From: Law and Order (1981)

Lindsey Buckingham was given the reins for Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 LP Tusk, indulging his mad-genius impulses to construct his most personal and textural work at that point. In 1981, after a grueling band tour, he made his first solo album, Law and Order, going even deeper into the multilayers of sounds. Buckingham played most everything himself, except on the hit single “Trouble,” which features drums by Mick Fleetwood.

 

3. Stevie Nicks, “Stand Back”
From: The Wild Heart (1983)

Inspired by Prince‘s “Little Red Corvette,” and written on the day of Nicks’ brief marriage to the widower of her best friend, “Stand Back” received an assist from the Minneapolis multi-instrumentalist, who was on the verge of going supernova thanks to Purple Rain the next year. Prince helped lay down some of the synths that drive the song, but Nicks’ engaged performance, one of her best, made “Stand Back” a No. 5 hit.

 

2. Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”
From: Bella Donna (1981)

Stevie Nicks’ debut solo album wasn’t a total alone affair. Two of its singles – “Leather and Lace” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – were duets with famous friends. The latter, which features Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, was her debut single and biggest solo song, written by Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell and delivered in top fiery form by Nicks, the perfect sparring partner here to a cautiously wary Petty.

 

1. Stevie Nicks, “Edge of Seventeen”
From: Bella Donna (1981)

Written as a reaction to two recent deaths – John Lennon and Nicks’ uncle – “Edge of Seventeen” opened Side Two of Stevie Nicks’ debut solo album, a vindication of her years in the trenches with Fleetwood Mac. Mishearing something Tom Petty’s wife told her (it was originally “age of 17″), Nicks built a five-and-a-half-minute masterpiece around a single 16th-note guitar riff that explodes into an unconventional chorus of symbolic “white-winged doves.” While the song rested outside the Top 10, stopping at No. 11, it helped carry Bella Donna to No. 1, the only Mac solo album to reach that position. The myth and legend of Stevie Nicks can be summed up in this great song.