Alex Henderson (All Music Guide)

The new lineup that Fleetwood Mac successfully unveiled with their eponymous 1975 album became even more successful with the multi-platinum Rumours, which became the band's most celebrated album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. To be sure, this was a very different sounding Fleetwood Mac than the blues-rock outfit of the late '60s. This edition of the band generally wasn't well received by rock critics (who tend to be critical of all things commercial). But as commercial and slick as Rumours is, the music has a lot of heart and never comes across as insincere. From Christine McVie's optimistic "Don't Stop" (which President Bill Clinton used as his campaign theme song in 1992) to Lindsey Buckingham's remorseful "Go Your Own Way," Rumours is consistently memorable. And the folkish "Gold Dust Woman" (covered by Courtney Love and Hole in 1996) and the melancholy hit "Dreams" made it quite clear just how much depth and substance Stevie Nicks was capable of.

Rob O'Connor (Amazon.com)

With the pop sense of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks now leading the band, Fleetwood Mac moved completely away from blues and created this homage to love, Southern California-style. Each songwriter makes his or her presence known: Nicks for her dreamy, mystical reveries ("Dreams," "Gold Dust Woman:); Christine McVie for her ultra-catchy slogans ("Don't Stop"); and Buckingham for his deceptively simple pop songs ("Second Hand News," "Go Your Own Way"). "The Chain," written collectively, is the Mac at their most dramatic. But it's the ensemble playing, the elastic rhythms, and lush harmonies that transform the material into classic FM fare.

Bill Wyman (Barnes & Noble)

In 1975, a pair of hard-living, hard-rocking British blues rockers went eye-to-eye with a pair of sensitive L.A. singer-songwriter types -- and the rockers blinked. The bluesmen were Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, whose band, Fleetwood Mac, had first recorded in 1967. The Californians were Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, a couple romantically and musically, who'd recorded an album as Buckingham Nicks. The two pairs, along with McVie's wife, Christine (a respected singer and songwriter in her own right who joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970 and then married John), teamed up and produced an album far more California sunshine rock than British blues. Following the grand success of their debut, FLEETWOOD MAC, the McVies broke up, as did Buckingham and Nicks, and the resulting romantic pressure-cooker -- coupled with Buckingham's flowering production talents -- produced RUMOURS, a tour de force that became one of the biggest-selling records ever made. "Here you go again," breathed Stevie Nicks near the start of the record, "you say you want your freedom." The emotional weariness captured in that line suffuses the album, notwithstanding the upbeat melodies and pristine, daring production. You also get Christine McVie's hit "Don't Stop" -- later a campaign theme song for Bill Clinton -- and arguably Buckingham's greatest track, a drum-driven cry at the death of love called "Go Your Own Way."

(CD Universe)

Fleetwood Mac: Lindsey Buckingham (vocals, guitar); Christine McVie (vocals, keyboards); Stevie Nicks (vocals); John McVie (bass); Mick Fleetwood (drums). Producers: Fleetwood Mac, Richard Dashut, Ken Caillat. Principally recorded at The Recort Plant & Wally Heider Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California, Criteria Studios, Miami, Florida, Davlen Recording Studio, North Hollywood, California. "Songbird" recorded live at Zellerback Auditorium, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, California on March 3, 1976.

The reviewers tell us what to buy, but the public actually part with the cash. Surely 26 million people cannot be wrong, as original Mac guitarist Peter Green's creation became the prime example of AOR long after his departure. The inner strife and turmoil of the band is credited as having helped to make this many-headed beast into such a success. Keyboardist Christine McVie sparred with husband/bassist John, and singer Stevie Nicks scrapped with boyfriend/guitarist Lindsay Buckingham. Drummer Mick Fleetwood held the emotional mess together with confident steadiness as demonstrated in his confident, inventive playing throughout the record. Nicks' fiery vocals on "Go Your Own Way" complemented McVie's beautifully understated style on tunes like "You Make Loving Fun," exemplifying their successful fire-ice dichotomy.

Arion Berger (RollingStone, issue 896, May 23, 2002)

Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" hasn't become a dated Seventies artifact, mostly because it sounded odd even then. Its brainy guitar solos were rather more frequent than those of other Southern California sunny soft-rock outfits; and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham pushed the production into a magnificent combination of intricate and spare, an alloy comfortable to drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, who thought they had formed a blues band back in 1967. The group's second album with its most famous lineup -- Fleetwood, Buckingham and his then-girlfriend, singer Stevie Nicks, and McVie and his ex-wife, singer and keyboardist Christine McVie -- Rumours tracks the twin couples as they split. It's not a classic breakup record; it wasn't built as a soundtrack to whatever heartbreak you're trying to sing along to. But it's their breakup record, and in its idiosyncratic way it mirrors all the lost loves of the world. The two couples confess, blame, sigh and ride a deep, chugging groove toward some kind of resolution. You can see the outlines of the couples' relationships -- both musical and romantic -- in the rubble. Here is the cool tenderness with which Nicks inserts her harmony on the words "been tossed around enough" during Buckingham's "Second Hand News"; here is Christine McVie coming out all generous like the sun on her smiley-face ballads "Songbird" and "Oh Daddy" and the mellow boogie "You Make Loving Fun." When Nicks isn't being tough on hits such as "Dreams" and, particularly, "Gold Dust Woman" -- as nasty a bit of business as her cute, torn voice ever got into -- she's inviting the whole group in for the countryish "I Don't Want to Know." Nothing explodes when it promises to: not the chorus of "Go Your Own Way," no matter what Fleetwood does to his drum kit; not the full-band invocation of coming darkness and cramped emotional interdependence on "The Chain." Instead, Rumours is splendid and pleasant and somehow too dense, like being trapped in an open meadow.

© Frank Steven Groen