PERFECT TEN
Key CHRISTINE McVIE compositions and/or performances, by MOJO’s writers. I’d Rather Go Blind (Blue Horizon single, 1969)
Perfect/McVie’s take on the Etta James song gave Chicken Shack their only major hit. McVie didn’t try to recreate James’s raw anguish; instead, hers is a wounded, peculiarly British performance that foreshadowed the emotional maturity she would bring to Fleetwood Mac. When You Say (from Christine Perfect, 1970)
The highlight of her pre-Fleetwood Mac solo album. Written by soon-tobe bandmate Danny Kirwan, this is a delicate piece of baroque pop with an autumnal chill blowing through its quivering strings and plaintive melody, as McVie comes across like an English Nico. The Way I Feel (from Mystery To Me, 1973)
From the underrated Christine McVie-Bob Welch Mac’s best LP, The Way I Feel is as affecting as anything from the band’s later apex, McVie’s piano and lovestruck melodies falling against a backdrop of beautifully plucked folk guitar. Over My Head
(from Fleetwood Mac, 1975)
The thrill of falling in love was familiar subject matter for McVie, yet she could always spin pop gold from it. Over My Head’s pitter-patter rhythms and bluegrass-flavoured acoustics help provide a gorgeous wave whose pull is impossible to resist. Say You Love Me (from Fleetwood Mac, 1975)
The less openly funky precursor to
Rumours’ You Make Loving Fun, the sprightly banjo and 12-string guitar underneath McVie’s piano chords adding to the feeling of abandon. The song peaked at Number 11 in the US charts – a harbinger of the greater success to come.
Don’t Stop
(from Rumours, 1977)
McVie’s blast of post-divorce positivity is a masterclass in moving on. But is everyone on board for her motivational therapy? “I know you don’t believe that it’s true/I never meant any harm to you,” suggests yesterday hasn’t quite gone, after all.
Songbird (from Rumours, 1977)
Recorded in an auditorium at UC Berkeley, a dozen red roses on top of her piano, McVie has described Songbird as: “a little prayer… an anthem for everybody”. For 21 years it closed every Fleetwood Mac show.
Brown Eyes (from Tusk, 1979)
Whether written for lighting man Curry Grant or Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, it’s one of the most openly seductive songs in the Mac canon – breathy voices moving like plumes of smoke around a stripped down backing of electric piano, bass and drums.
Little Lies
(from Tango In The Night, 1987)
There’s desolation in this ambient ballad’s choral filigrees. McVie’s narrator longs to defer the terminal car crash of the dysfunctional love affair, but seems guiltily aware of the sweet, masochistic kick of being deceived.
Feel About You
(from Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie, 2017)
Proving the sex-free chemistry between Mac’s guitarist and pianist could still work magic in the 21st century, this is buoyant, bliss-filled pop whose bouncing marimba and stacked backing vocals might have fit snugly onto Tango In The Night. By Chris Catchpole, Ian Harrison, Jim Irvin, Victoria Segal