by Rachel Alessi

Created on: March 28, 2010

The award-winning Rumours is the eleventh studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac. Released on 4 February 1977 (I was way too young to appreciate it then!) the album spawned four hit singles (Go Your Own Way, Don’t Stop, Dreams and You Make Loving Fun) and was the bands most successful release, with sales of over 40 million copies worldwide to date. The record went to number one in both the US Billboard 200 and the UK album charts. It is the 14th best-selling album in British history. 

Bubbling underneath this global success, however, lay an acrimonious tale of affairs and relationship breakdowns from which no member of the band was immune. The fall-out of this was Rumours – a record steeped in anger and recrimination and and fuelled in no small part by excessive partying and drug-use.

Things hadn’t been going well for the band for a few years previously. Founder Peter Green had departed, leaving the remaining core members of drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and his wife Christine who played keyboards, in a state of flux and lacking in musical direction. They eventually recruited Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, a singer-songwriter duo. With this addition their sound graduated from one of blues to that of pop.

The very fact that Rumours managed to get off the ground is quite incredibly in my opinion considering that the band was on the verge of imploding. Stevie Nicks once said that Fleetwood Mac created the best music when in the worst shape, which was a very shrewd observation. Rumours is given a nod by many of the most credible names in the music industry (and beyond) in their  ‘best of all time’  shortlists, including Rolling Stone, Q , Time Magazine, USA Today and The Guardian.

What’s crystal clear to me is that when you listen to this album you're not just on a musical journey. It's much more than that. You’re privy to are the deepest feelings and thoughts of people who are actually going through something, and whilst that could be called voyeuristic ( there’s no doubt in my mind  that in some small way the huge success of Rumours can be attributed to that) it’s also, for me, a deeply personal experience and, in some parts, very sad. It’s compelling listening; I’d put money on the fact that most if not all of us can relate to at least one of those tracks...

Rumours takes the listener down a path on which we are exposed to  the

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