Rumours is the eleventh studio album by the British and American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 4 February 1977, by Warner Bros. Records. Largely recorded in California in 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The recording sessions took place as the band members dealt with breakups with one another and struggled with heavy drug use, both of which shaped the album's direction and lyrics.
Recorded with the intention of making "a pop album" that would expand on the commercial success of the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac, Rumours contains a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation, accented rhythms, guitars, and keyboards, with lyrics concerning personal and often troubled relationships. Its release was postponed by delays in the mixing process. The band promoted the album with a worldwide concert tour.
Rumours became the band's first number-one album on the UK Albums Chart and also topped the US Billboard 200. It received multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As of February 2023, Rumours had sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. All of its four singles—"Go Your Own Way", "Dreams", "Don't Stop", and "You Make Loving Fun"—reached the top 10 of the US Billboard Hot 100, with "Dreams" reaching number one. In 2004, Rumours was remastered and reissued, with the addition of the track "Silver Springs" and outtakes from the recording sessions.
The album garnered widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its production quality and the vocal harmonies of the band's three singers, and won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammy Awards. Often considered Fleetwood Mac's magnum opus and one of the greatest albums of all time, Time magazine included it in its exclusive list of the All-TIME 100 Albums, a recognition of the "greatest and most influential musical compilations". It was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003 and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2017 by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2020, Rumours was ranked seventh in Rolling Stones list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Background
left|thumb|Fleetwood Mac in 1977. From left to right: [[Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.]]
After guitarist Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac in 1974, drummer Mick Fleetwood, keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, and bassist John McVie were joined by guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks. In July 1975, Fleetwood Mac released its eponymous tenth album to great commercial success, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. in 1976; the record's singles "Over My Head", "Rhiannon" and "Say You Love Me" all reached the Top 20 there.
The band's success belied turmoil amongst its members; after six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced, ending eight years of marriage. The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters. Buckingham and Nicks were having an on/off relationship that led them to fight often. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. Fleetwood faced domestic problems of his own after discovering that his wife Jenny, mother of his two children, was having an affair with his best friend.
Press intrusions into the band members' lives led to inaccurate stories. Christine McVie was reported to have been in the hospital with a serious illness, while Buckingham and Nicks were declared the parents of Fleetwood's daughter Lucy after being photographed with her. The press also wrote about a rumoured return of original Fleetwood Mac members Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Jeremy Spencer for a tenth anniversary tour. Despite false reports, the band did not change its lineup, although its members had no time to come to terms with the separations before recording for a new album began. In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac crafted some new tracks in Florida. Fleetwood and John McVie fired their producer Keith Olsen because he favoured a lower emphasis on the rhythm section. The duo formed a company called Seedy Management to represent the band's interests.
Recording
thumb|alt=Large, wooden building with a brown door (showing woodland animals play musical instruments) located in the bottom, centre left, and the large numbers "2200" painted in white above the door, centre-right. Asymmetrical trees with hanging foliage frame the building on all sides, while on the asphalt in the foreground, there are parking spaces and a disabled person sign.|Rumours was largely recorded in [[Sausalito, California|Sausalito's Record Plant, a wooden structure with few windows, located at 2200 Marinship Way.]]
In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with the engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The three parties shared production duties, while the more technically adept Caillat was responsible for most of the engineering; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would eventually use their facilities. The set-up in Sausalito included several small recording rooms in a large, windowless, wooden building. Most band members complained about the studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Fleetwood did not allow any moves. Christine McVie and Nicks decided to live in two condominiums near the city's harbour, while the male contingent stayed at the studio's lodge in the adjacent hills. Recording occurred in a room equipped with a 3M 24-track tape machine, a range of high-quality microphones, and an API mixing console with 550A equalisers; the latter were used to control frequency differences or a track's timbre. Although Caillat was impressed with the set-up, he felt that the room lacked ambience because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing. According to Dashut, while Fleetwood and the McVies came from an improvisational blues rock background, the guitarist understood "the craft of record making". During the formative stages of compositions, Buckingham and Christine McVie played guitar and piano together to create the album's basic structures. The latter was the only classically trained musician in Fleetwood Mac, but both shared a similar sense of musicality. When the band jammed, Fleetwood often played his drum kit outside the studio's partition screen to better gauge Caillat's and Dashut's reactions to the music's groove. The musicians did not meet or socialise after their daily work at the Record Plant. At the time, the hippie movement still affected Sausalito's culture and drugs were readily available. Open-ended budgets enabled the band and the engineers to become self-indulgent; sleepless nights and the extensive use of cocaine marked much of the album's production.
Rumours has been acclaimed by music critics since its release. Much of the praise has focused on the album’s production, vocal harmonies, and musical arrangements. Robert Christgau, reviewing in The Village Voice, described it as "more consistent and more eccentric" than its predecessor. He added that it "jumps right out of the speakers at you". Rolling Stone magazine's John Swenson believed the interplay among the three vocalists was one of the album's most pleasing elements; he stated, "Despite the interminable delay in finishing the record, Rumours proves that the success of Fleetwood Mac was no fluke." In a review for The New York Times, John Rockwell said the album is "a delightful disk, and one hopes the public thinks so, too", while Dave Marsh of the St. Petersburg Times claimed the songs are "as grandly glossy as anything right now". Robert Hilburn was less receptive and called Rumours a "frustratingly uneven" record in his review for the Los Angeles Times, while Juan Rodriguez of The Gazette suggested that, while the music is "crisper and clearer", Fleetwood Mac's ideas are "slightly more muddled". The album finished fourth in The Village Voices 1977 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which aggregated the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.
In a retrospective review, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave Rumours five stars and noted that, regardless of the voyeuristic element, the record was "an unparalleled blockbuster" because of the music's quality; he concluded, "Each tune, each phrase regains its raw, immediate emotional power—which is why Rumours touched a nerve upon its 1977 release, and has since transcended its era to be one of the greatest, most compelling pop albums of all time." while Andy Gill of The Independent claimed it "represents, along with The Eagles Greatest Hits, the high-water mark of America's Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism". while Patrick McKay of Stylus Magazine wrote, "What distinguishes Rumours—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss."
Commercial performance
Rumours was a huge commercial success and became Fleetwood Mac's second US number-one record, following the 1975 eponymous release. It stayed at the top of the Billboard 200 for 31 non-consecutive weeks, while also reaching number one in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, It re-entered the Billboard 200 chart at number 11 in May 2011, and the Australian ARIA chart at number 2, after several songs from the album were used for the "Rumours" episode of the American TV series Glee. It re-entered the Billboard 200 top ten in October 2020 in the wake of a viral TikTok by Nathan Apodaca which showed him skateboarding while "Dreams" played, even prompting Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham to create similar videos. The album was certified platinum in America and the UK within months of release after one million units and 300,000 units were shipped, respectively. In February, the band and co-producers Caillat and Dashut won the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
By 1980, 13 million copies of Rumours had been sold worldwide. As of 2017, sales were over 40 million copies. It is the 11th-best-selling album in UK history, and is certified 14× platinum by the British Phonographic Industry, the equivalent of 4.2 million units shipped. The record has received a Diamond Award from the Recording Industry Association of America for a 20× platinum certification or 20 million copies shipped, making it, , tied for the 11th-highest certified album in US history (by number of copies shipped). Rumours was the UK's bestselling album on vinyl during 2020, with the Official Charts Company confirming 32,500 annual sales in the format.
Legacy
Mick Fleetwood has called Rumours "the most important album we ever made", because its success allowed the group to continue recording for years to come. Pop culture journalist Chuck Klosterman links the record's sales figures to its "really likable songs" but suggests that "no justification for greatness" is intrinsically provided by them. In 1997, The Guardian surveyed renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, who placed the record at number 78 in the list of the 100 Best Albums Ever. In 1998, Fleetwood produced and released Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, an album that consisted of one cover of each song off Rumours by an act influenced by it, including alternative rock bands Tonic, Matchbox 20, and Goo Goo Dolls; Celtic rock groups The Corrs and The Cranberries; and singer-songwriters Elton John, Duncan Sheik, and Jewel. Other acts influenced by Rumours include Tori Amos, hard rock group Saliva, indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, and art pop singer Lorde, who called it a "perfect record".