You Make Polling Fun: FLEETWOOD MAC POLL RESULTS, ILM Artist Poll #22

It's my birthday, I've just been taken to lunch, and we're doing the Fleetwood Mac top twenty. I gotta say, today is a good day.

Hot Chip covered "Everywhere" a couple weeks ago

I like "Everywhere," but it has a generic adult-contemporary vibe such that I sometimes forget it's a Fleetwood Mac song.

If most adult-contempo was as nuanced and melodically graceful as "Everywhere," I'd submit immediately.

Happy Birthday, IK

Those squishy synths and bop-a-bop Muppet harmonies are the bomb

Thank you nbs. And I've got a Sopranos end-of-season for later. Now just waiting for Everybody Finds Out at no.1 and it'll be perfect.

You didn't even have to use your A-K!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IobDug0Ht1g

bop-a-bop Muppet harmonies

^ this!

Harmonies and backing tracks in Fleetwood Mac and especially solo Buckingham are so precise, right down to the stereo separation, that they sound like Synclavier samples.

i hear everywhere at so many parties

"Little Lies" was my #1, "Big Love" was my #4, and "Everywhere Was My #5". Other than that Cut Copy ripoff (which I've listened to a few times, starting with excitement but ending with an empty feeling), I don't know much else that sounds so utterly flawless and integrated and satisfying in the way that these tracks do.

"Everywhere Was My #5"

This reads like a fIREHOSE song.

http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/happy-birthday-stevie-nicks.34595/

If most adult-contempo was as nuanced and melodically graceful as "Everywhere," I'd submit immediately.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, July 26, 2012 10:38 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

F'real

Christine turned 69 two weeks ago.

I don't know much else that sounds so utterly flawless and integrated and satisfying in the way that these tracks do.

the apex of sleek eighties pop

BAWM BAWM BAWM BAWM BUH BUH BAWM

#18: "Second Hand News" (Lindsey Buckingham, 1977) - 338 points, 16 votes, 1 number one vote

http://www.fleetwoodmac.net/penguin/biographies/lindsey1.jpg

Track link: http://youtu.be/p6Fdm3-dnr0

Yes, that is young Buck

the apex of sleek eighties pop

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 26, 2012 11:06 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Speaking of... Last night, I had a dream in which I was at a very small coffeeshop, and sitting on stage playing solo (yet with full-band sound) was Sir Phil Collins. He played a few of his hits, but I remember him playing a particular song that I thought was undeniably his best one (and I thought of it in explicitly that ILM-poll sense of "oh yeah, this is the one I'm voting for"). The thing was, it wasn't an actual Phil Collins song. My sleeping brain was somehow composing my Platonic ideal of a Phil Collins song and he was right there performing it for me and maybe 25 other people.

Two songs in a row here I want to say TOO LOW to.

i hear everywhere at so many parties

― just sayin, Thursday, 26 July 2012 15:51 (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

has that balearic sheen, great set-ending qualities. was my number 3 and astonished it's not top 10.

As a kid -- by which I mean an 8- or 9-year-old -- I thought "lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff" was both exciting (because it was obviously about SEX) and gross (because ditto).

That's one of my favorite lyrics ever.

I honestly thought "Everywhere" was going to place higher, too...

#17: "Over and Over" (Christine McVie, 1979) - 342 points, 15 votes, 1 number one vote

http://blog.schoolofrock.com/Portals/19575/images/Christine-McVie-cwhitebw.jpg

Track link: http://youtu.be/X5YHRcG-GJg

Here's the point where Tusk worshipers are going to begin annoying me.

There's my number one. Happy at least that it didn't end up in the lower 2/3s of the poll. The first Fleetwood Mac thing I ever really listened to was Camper Van Beethoven's recording of Tusk. I came back to this song more than all the others and it really spurred me to seek out the original album. So much sweetness in this song. That single repeated guitar note at the end that hits at the same time as the snare. Those surprising fills that Mick whips out at the end.

It's a mighty song. The acoustic guitar sounds so damn thick on this.

This song pulls off one of my favorite sounds effortlessly: sun-dappled melancholy.

hear everywhere at so many parties

― just sayin

Is this a Britishes thing, or a hipster thing, or...? Seriously asking, cuz nobody I know spins 80s pop at parties,or knows the meaning of the word balearic.

that's a shame. over and over is lovely, the way it builds toward the end and goes up a notch is what really makes it for me.

'Everywhere' was a staple of every club night/house party I went to as an undergrad (2008-2011) in London.

The way the last lines don't go back into the chorus and just sort of disintegrate into the outro.

The first Fleetwood Mac thing I ever really listened to was Camper Van Beethoven's recording of Tusk

Wow. Well, at least it sent you back to the source!

I rolled with the CVB album for about a year before I got ahold of the original Tusk though. I was a huge CVB fan anyway, and although it was sort of slapdash, it's not the worst thing they've done.

What hubris to start an album with a ballad.

#16: "Hypnotized" (Bob Welch, 1973) - 344 points, 14 votes

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bYaTwpX-8ZM/T9I7P-Y8ktI/AAAAAAAABnM/h_ziyHKe6vk/s640/bob-welch-fleetwood.jpg

Track link: http://youtu.be/r3SqYMgKhsk

What hubris to start an album with a ballad.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 26, 2012 3:47 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

People always say this about this song, but really? I can't think of any other examples off the top of my head, but it ballads are something FM had been doing really well for a while.

'Everywhere' was the last track played at a beach festival I went to recently. It's totally a Balearic staple.

What hubris to start an album with a ballad.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 26, 2012 11:47 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've thought this before myself... I love it, though, love the pacing and almost impossibly gracefulness of it.

I can't think of any other examples off the top of my head

Of earlier albums that start with a ballad. "Box of Rain" is sort of close, a mid-tempo song about mortality.

Hypnotized is so good. But Clarke's Phil Collins dream is better. I wish there was a way to capture dreamsongs.

So do I... I've had quite a few of them semi-recently, actually. Even if you kept a microphone and recorded beside your bed or something, you couldn't really capture the way the song felt, the fullness of it. Oh well.

But yeah, "Hypnotized" is my version of your "Green Manalishi" phenomenon, Ismael--that one song that does something no other Fleetwood Mac song (or song from anyone, for that matter) quite does. It's such a specific, eerie, amazing mood that it captures.

I had it on in the car earlier and was reflecting on how they've always done dreaminess so well, even though there's often no writers and barely any personnel in common - Albatross, Dragonfly, Hypnotised, Sara...

re: everywhere
i've seen everywhere played from generic clubs, parties where music's been played by people with very middle-ground music tastes, hipster parties and even by the dj at my local pub, so i think in the uk it's kind of been accepted by pretty much all 'indie' possible scenes, in my experience anyway.

#15: "Gold Dust Woman" (Stevie Nicks, 1977) - 346 points, 16 votes

http://blog.needsupply.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/stevie-nicks-1981.jpg

Track link: http://youtu.be/VGO9jNHH5Lw

There's my no.2 - Green Manalishi, this and I'm So Afraid were my all-paranoia top three.

This probably won't make the list, so for anyone who has yet to delve into some of those "lesser" Mac albums, here's Bob recreating that eerie "Hypnotized" vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNycYnn3oAE

Totally cool with "Everywhere" at parties, btw, just more accustomed to old soul music for the most part.