A Radio History of Fleetwood Mac

Five years ago, as Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” sidewalk surfed its way back into pop culture, I wrote both about the song’s new relevance and the band’s on- again/off-again relationship with radio. Incredibly, over the last five years, there’s been so much more. Prompted by the just-announced reissue of 1973’s Buckingham Nicks album and more, I’ve updated the story below.

Over Christmas break 1976, I went to visit a radio friend and asked him about “Go Your Own Way,” the new Fleetwood Mac single, which I hadn’t heard yet. “It’s just okay,” he said. “They’re going to be a one album band.” Six months later, they were clearly more than that. “Dreams” was No. 1, already the inescapable song of the summer, and I was never able to enjoy hearing it on the radio again. 

But I sought out “Dreams” on the radio this week because WWWQ (Q99.7) Atlanta is playing that song as a current, now that it’s a TikTok phenomenon. Since it began a week ago, five other Cumulus Top 40 outlets have followed suit, including WSSX (95SX) Charleston, S.C., and WNTQ (93Q) Syracuse, N.Y. In a memo to the sales and airstaff, Cumulus VP Top 40 Louie Diaz compares “Dreams” to the movie-driven “bring-backs” of the ‘80s and ‘90s.” Q99.7, he says, “will treat it like a current song. You don’t need to wait for a DJ like KYGO to remix the song. People love it as it is … So when you hear it into the Weeknd or Post Malone on Q99.7, don’t think it’s weird.”

“Dreams” didn’t sound out of place on Q99.7, perhaps because when I heard it, it was coming out of “Circles,” another song with a similar loping feel. It was followed by a brief whisper sweeper and Saint Jhn’s “Roses.” The segue didn’t sound abrupt; “Dreams” winds to its conclusion in a way that makes it easy to schedule next to a lot of songs. But “Roses,” which had started to feel a little less unusual after six months, sounded hotter than ever.

“Dreams” is indeed one of those pop-culture moments that current-based formats should acknowledge. Like Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow” two years ago, it doesn’t fix anything. It does show up Top 40’s current product issues, in the same way that “Bohemian Rhapsody” did in 1992. But that’s not Stevie Nicks’ fault, and it buys PDs some more time to address those issues. If the familiarity of its hook helps propel “Dreams” toward power rotation — think Surf Mesa — we can discuss that later.

It is interesting that TikTok would propel Fleetwood Mac on to the airwaves at even the handful of CHRs that have played it thus far, at a time when a once-reliable act was in danger of being reduced to one enduring song at Classic Hits radio. So here are some thoughts on Fleetwood Mac’s radio history:

In 1977, the simultaneous success of the Rumours album and the Eagles’ Hotel California was the epicenter of multiple trends: the increased overshadowing of Top 40 by Album Rock Radio; the mainstreaming of AOR at the Lee Abrams-consulted “Superstars” stations; the rise of Adult Contemporary radio on FM, with many of its first stations having evolved from “Soft Rock.” 1977 was also when callout research first took hold, perfect for a mainstream, consensus act that also happened to make good records. 

Fleetwood Mac defied the “one album band” prediction. Instead, after the four consecutive hits from Rumours — a first-time occurrence — almost everything else on the album (as well as then b-side “Silver Springs”) was played as a single in one market or another. Over the next two years, there were almost a Lindsay Buckingham/Stevie Nicks album’s worth of side projects — Bob Welch, Walter Egan, John Stewart, Kenny Loggins. As it turned out, those side projects would end up comprising the mainstream follow-up to Rumours that Lindsay Buckingham didn’t want to make for his own band. 

By the time “Tusk” came out in September 1979, a lot had happened, and not just disco’s boom and bust. Van Halen had propelled AOR toward a harder sound. New Wave’s first American hits had surfaced. “Tusk,” the Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight” and the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” came out within a few days of each other. “Heartache Tonight” lacked the ambition of “Hotel California,” but it was an obvious enough hit single that radio could deal with. “Rapper’s Delight” was the seismic event, but it would take four months for Top 40 to acknowledge it, even a little. “Tusk,” at the time, was neither crowd-pleaser nor game-changer. The radio-friendly follow-ups came quickly—“Sara” and “Think About Me”—but neither felt like a real hit.

“Tusk” was an instant abdication of Fleetwood Mac’s half of their shared “No. 1 core act” status at radio; (the Eagles gave back their half by drifting into their breakup). And yet Fleetwood Mac and its members had airplay for almost anything they did at radio for nearly another decade. Here’s a timeline:

1980-81 — As current hitmakers, Fleetwood Mac are mostly out of action during Top 40’s doldrums, although the Rumours hits are certainly present. The unavoidable side projects now belong to Michael McDonald — the Doobie Brothers having reclaimed their place in Soft Rock in 1979 while the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were recording. Buckingham’s “Trouble” is a bright spot at the format’s very lowest late ’81 moments. Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” is one of the bearable hits of early ’82, but it’s not as big as we remember it now.

1982 – “Hold Me” and “Gypsy” give radio the Fleetwood Mac it wants; they arrive as things are changing in pop music, but when Fleetwood Mac (or Crosby, Stills & Nash) can still have hits. The third single from Mirage, “Love in Store,” is the hard-driving, yet harmonic Fleetwood Mac I love, but by early 1983, as MTV drives a CHR resurgence, and “Thriller” explodes, it sounds quaint.

1983-84 – Fleetwood Mac are largely MIA from Top 40 during its golden era, except for Nicks’ “Stand Back,” the most propulsive of her hits to date. It’s interesting to wonder if Buckingham’s sonic experiments could have worked better in an era when Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen were doing the same. His “Go Insane” and Christine McVie’s “Got a Hold on Me” get an airing at the long-playlisted CHR of 1984 for a few weeks, but Top 40 doesn’t really need those songs. The Rumours hits are still part of AC, but at this point, most CHRs don’t need to go back to the ‘70s for gold.

1985-86 – Nicks’ “Talk to Me” comes out in late ’85 at the end of Madonna’s two-year rise to superstardom, and as the CHR boom is starting to wind down. I love the follow-up, the hyperkinetic “I Can’t Wait.” Nicks is experimenting with sonics similar to “Owner of a Lonely Heart” or the “Dancing in the Dark” remix, but two years later. Besides, there’s another, even more hyperkinetic song with that name from Nu Shooz, and that’s the one that fits on KPWR (Power 106) Los Angeles as dance pop ascends.

1987-88 — “Big Love,” the first single from Tango in the Night, sounds different. I remember thinking at the time that perhaps Buckingham had wanted to make a song Power 106 could play, and it does for a while. By this time, even the mainstream stars of 1983-84 are being overshadowed by dance-pop and the emergence of hair bands. Nicks’ “Seven Wonders” no longer sounds like what major-market CHR radio plays, although McVie’s “Little Lies” and “Everywhere” become hits.

1992 – The hitmaking lineup of Fleetwood Mac has been dormant for three years. As Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign theme song, “Don’t Stop” returns them to the spotlight, but not in a “Bohemian Rhapsody” way to CHR radio. As Top 40 descends into doldrums, Nicks gets an assist from Bon Jovi on “Sometimes It’s a Bitch,” but to little effect. Buckingham has a great single, “Countdown,” that sounds particularly out of time that year. The group’s real pop-culture moment during the doldrums is the 1994 Smashing Pumpkins’ remake of “Landslide,” setting the stage for what happens three years later.

1997 – Top 40 is rebounding. Releasing the live version of “Landslide” from The Dance is meant to remind people of Fleetwood Mac’s influence on the Modern AC hits of the mid-‘90s, but it comes when pop radio is changing again and teen pop is resurgent. At the time, a Warner Bros. rep bemoans how current radio seems to be ashamed to play a Fleetwood Mac record. It takes the Dixie Chicks/Sheryl Crow version of “Landslide” five years later to drive the point home. Even when the Chicks are exiled from Country radio shortly thereafter, “Landslide” is the one song of theirs that reliably continues to test, even at Country radio. By this time, “Landslide” is as big a Fleetwood Mac song as any, despite (or perhaps because of) not having been a hit single until now.

2000s – As the Oldies format (not yet Classic Hits) pushes into the ‘70s, the Rumours singles are among its powers. I’m not initially happy about that — they feel like AC songs to me, not good-time oldies, and the same goes for all those Billy Joel and Elton John titles from the era. By the end of the decade, “The Chain” and “Gold Dust Woman” also test for Classic Hits stations.

2010s – Fleetwood Mac begin the decade as one of Classic Hits, Classic Rock, and Mainstream AC’s most reliable acts. Only Queen, the Eagles, and Elton John seem to still have as many titles in play. As the Classic Hits format rebounds in the early 2010s, AC radio moves away from the ‘70s — even “Dreams.” “Landslide” still creeps in because some stations treat it as a ‘90s/’00s song. 

At Classic Hits, I see both the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac start to lose traction in the late ‘10s. Occasionally, I wonder if it’s because two acts that have been open in their politics over the years have lost at least a few fans in our polarized America, but it’s probably more a passage-of-time issue. Even the early ‘80s are starting to shed some of their reliable hits, and those listeners being tested by radio are kids of the late ‘80s or later. (You’re more likely to hear “Little Lies” than “You Make Loving Fun.”) In any event, “Landslide” is a more enduring song now than “Dreams.” Until now. 

I’m still working through my feelings about TikTok as America’s CHR music director. So it’s interesting to imagine streaming’s impact on Classic Hits and Classic Rock. I’m always thrilled when a new song comes into the canon. Over the last decade, I’ve seen Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” emerge as an all-ages pop culture mainstay, but I haven’t found a lot of Classic Hits PDs willing to consider it. But “Jolene” happened over the course of a decade, driven by talent shows and Parton’s own pop-culture footprint. (It’s interesting that Miley Cyrus, who reworked “Jolene” last year, has a current single that recalls both “Little Lies” and “Edge of Seventeen.”) Could a “Dreams”-level phenomenon have made it happen in three weeks?

Then again, could a “Dreams”-level phenomenon have happened in three weeks for an older title that was not already a mega-hit on that level? I would have preferred “Tusk,” which seems custom-made for goofy videos, but if somebody is choosing a 1970s song, it’s probably going to be the one that endured in the first place. I’m looking forward to the next breakthrough, and I can only hope it’s not “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”

Update: It’s 2025 now and there’s so much more to add. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” didn’t come back to CHR, although Kate Bush did. So far, neither has “Dreams” really, although at least one colleague continues to advocate for it. But both “Dreams” and Rumours remain very present, and there’s been plenty of Mac-tivity since. Here’s a recap:

2021 – I make a label A&R contact aware that there’s a new version of “Dreams” making inroads elsewhere in the world. He believes, as do many, that the window of opportunity is long closed, but Jolyon Petch’s dance remake tops the Australian charts for months and becomes the No. 1 airplay record of the year. (For fans of the era, another Australian DJ will have an equally improbable success with a remake of Suzi Quatro & Chris Norman’s “Stumblin’ In” that becomes the top Aussie airplay song of 2024.)

2021-22 – For years, “Everywhere” has been a song with no footprint in North America. It is still easy to find on the radio in the UK when Niall Horan and Anne-Marie team up with an all-star cast for that year’s likable BBC Children in Need benefit single. The following year, Christine McVie’s loveliest song appears in a Chevy EV ad, and starts to have an American radio presence again. Her her death later that year propels it onto the iTunes and a Billboard rock chart. It now seems to be part of the Mac canon again here, despite the Will Ferrell for Paypal ad that might make you want to not hear it anywhere again.

2024 – When “Seven Wonders” was released in 1987, as the second single from Tango in the Night, it was the only single to not really get traction at the time–proof that both Fleetwood Mac and mainstream pop/rock had been upstaged by the growth of Rhythmic Top 40. (Soon on the UK charts, house music exploded and one hit specifically took aim at the band.) I always regarded it as among Stevie Nicks’ loveliest and wasn’t surprised when I started to hear songs with a similar feel last year. I did “Taste” it in Sabrina Carpenter’s hit last year, but I also heard it in this Country album cut.

2025 – In 1977, Polydor reissued the 1973 Buckingham/Nicks album, but it was largely lost in all the post-Rumours side projects. Last week, excitement began building among Facebook friends about the album finally being available digitally, with many expecting young listeners to discover it. Since last Friday, “Crying in the Night,” the same single Polydor chose in 1977, has gotten about 416,000 spins, which is not a lot in streaming world, but probably a lot more people than heard the song again in 1977. Besides, I think the hit is “Don’t Let Me Down Again” and that won’t be back until the whole project returns in September.

Then there’s the continued success of both “Dreams” and Rumours, taunting reminders of the paucity of current product and the softness of today’s album chart. I thought “Dreams” was a little, well, sleepy to be the song of summer in 1977, but the competition now is “Ordinary” and now it’s the hottest, most fun boppiest banger ever. Liveline’s Mason Kelter thinks you should just play “Dreams” now if the audience wants it. I wouldn’t be mad, but I can’t accept it as an alternative to solving the product shortage. Still KLLC (Alice 97.3) San Francisco is indeed playing the song 3x a week now.