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Fleetwood Mac · S5 E6
A Double Album
Twenty tracks, over a million dollars in studio costs, and a record label holding its breath
The finished master tapes arrive at Warner Bros. headquarters, and there are twenty songs on them. The label ordered a follow-up to the best-selling album in their history, and what they got is a double album that sounds like three different bands fighting over the same record.
"Hold Me" (Fleetwood Mac, official music video, 1982). This is what Warner Bros. wanted Tusk to sound like: Christine and Lindsey trading vocals on a summer hit, radio-ready and warm. Three years after Tusk, the band gave the label exactly what it asked for. Whether that was a relief or a retreat depends on who you ask.
Twenty Songs
Nobody at Warner Bros. asked for a double album. They wanted a lean, focused follow-up to Rumours: twelve songs, polished and radio-ready. Instead, the band delivered twenty tracks spread across four vinyl sides, spanning everything from Christine's pop hooks to Lindsey's tape experiments to Stevie's gothic ballads. The label had to decide whether to trust the biggest band on their roster or ask them to cut it in half.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick and Bozza, Anthony. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
“The record company wanted us to trim it down to a single album. But we felt that every song had earned its place. We'd been through too much to throw any of them away.”
— Mick Fleetwood, paraphrased from "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac" (Little, Brown, 2014)
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Warner Bros. do when they heard the album's price tag?
Hold Me, Fleetwood Mac (1982)
"Hold Me" is what happens when Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham stop fighting and write together. The production is clean and bright, built on a synth-pop shimmer that screams early 1980s. Christine's verse melts into Lindsey's chorus with a warmth that makes the Tusk experiments feel like a fever dream. Listen for how polished everything sounds compared to the lo-fi grit of Tusk. This is Fleetwood Mac retreating to safe ground, and it works beautifully, which is part of why the Tusk debate never ends.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
The Tracklisting War
Sequencing twenty songs across four sides was its own battle. Each songwriter wanted their tracks placed for maximum impact, and the running order had to balance Lindsey's experiments with Christine's hooks and Stevie's epics. The final tracklisting opens with Christine's "Over & Over" and closes with Christine's "Never Forget," bookending the chaos with her warmth. It was Lindsey's most radical album, but Christine got the first and last word.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
Tusk: The Album
Honey Hi, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
"Honey Hi" is the song that proves Tusk's double album format buried potential singles. Christine McVie wrote a bouncy, irresistible pop track that would have been fought over by radio programmers on any other album. On Tusk, it sits on side four, track sixteen, where casual listeners never reach it. It's a perfect example of the double album's great paradox: more music means more great songs, but it also means more great songs that nobody hears.
Honey Hi, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
"Something 'bout you, honey, gets to me." This is Christine McVie at her simplest and most effective: a lyric that says exactly what it means and a melody that sticks on first listen. There's no mystery, no metaphor, no eight-minute opus. Just a songwriter who knows that sometimes the best thing a song can do is make you feel good for three minutes. On an album full of artistic statements, that directness is its own kind of radical.
Whose songs open and close the Tusk album?
October 12, 1979. Tusk hits record store shelves worldwide, and the reviews start rolling in. Four million copies will sell, but in the shadow of Rumours, four million feels like a failure. Next: the numbers, the backlash, and the argument that still hasn't been settled.
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