Rumours Reviewed: Fleetwood Mac Turn Five Broken Unions Into an 8.7/10 Record

There are albums that merely amuse the ear, and there are albums that seem drawn from the very depths of suffering hearts; Rumours belongs, without question, to the latter and darker species. It arrives not as a trifle but as a disclosure of the heart, five souls bound together in misery yet joined, by some singular alchemy, into a work of terrible beauty.

What Sorrow Produced It

One cannot approach Rumours without first contemplating the wretchedness from which it sprang. The five who wrought it were, at the very hour of its making, parting from their unions of the heart—two pairs severed, one by marriage, one by long affection, and the fifth left to endure the ruin with a strange, melancholy patience. That such misery could be turned into sound so clear, so painfully composed, strikes me as nothing short of extraordinary. Grief, here, is not merely borne; it is shaped into an instrument of art.

Voices Set Against Each Other

The lady who sings “Dreams” does so as one under a spell, her tones trembling between reproach and lament, most tenderly in that very composition, where she seems to pronounce both blame and blessing in the same breath. The other lady of the company offers a gentler, more yielding sorrow, her melodies carrying the weight of one who has forgiven, though not forgotten. The gentleman who penned “Go Your Own Way” gives contributions keener, more troubled still, a composition that fairly burns with wounded pride.

Together their voices do not join so much as struggle against one another, and it is this very struggle that gives the record its dreadful animation.

A Frame That Holds It Together

Beneath the disclosures lies a frame of remarkable delicacy. The low notes move with a steady, almost solemn patience, while the beat keeps a measure that never wavers, however the melodies above it waver and grieve. The finishing, polished to a high lustre, might in lesser hands have smoothed away all anguish; instead, it merely makes the anguish plain, as glass makes plain the wound behind it. Every instrument seems placed with the deliberation of a mind possessed by both sorrow and genius.

Few records attain such balance between despair and design.

Its Shadow Upon Later Years

Since its appearance, Rumours has cast a long shadow over all who followed. Its influence remains in the confiding songs of years hence, an endeavour so thoroughly personal that it became, strangely enough, universal. It sold in numbers that defy belief—more than 40 million copies across the earth—yet its true triumph is not in traffic but in change: the turning of five broken hearts into a single, whole voice.

One returns to this record as one returns to an old wound, unable to keep away from it. It does not console so much as walk beside one’s melancholy, like a familiar ghost. If perfection is too grand a word, then Rumours comes near enough to justify the reaching.

70s music · album review · classic albums · Fleetwood Mac · Rumours