What's the deal with this album and why is it overrated as fuck?

Decent soft rock for its time, but doesn't seem worth all the praise and ginormous sales it got.

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npr.org/sections/allsongs/2013/01/29/170552631/why-ive-never-liked-fleetwood-macs-rumours
youtube.com/watch?v=A3JA1nWPFqM
youtube.com/watch?v=P160_odTwyY
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It appealed to women.

Bitches who wear chokers seem to like it

while we're at it, why is this one so underrated? This is probably my favorite FM album and I'm not even memeing

npr.org/sections/allsongs/2013/01/29/170552631/why-ive-never-liked-fleetwood-macs-rumours

This guy explains it. He says the album was much too tame and bland in the year of punk rock; it appealed more to soccer moms than edgy teens. Nowadays it sounds too crude and unpolished.

It's a collection of well composed, well rounded, nonoffensive nice songs with great production and no edge to them.

All good songs, but none of them great.

Rumours is typical of 70s AOR; they put almost all their songwriting effort into the singles (specifically Don't Stop and Go Your Own Way) and forgot about the rest of the album.

Can someone tell me what the thing is making the tapping sound in second hand news?

YOU CAN GO YOUR OWN WAAAAAAAAAY

I love Don't Stop, otherwise the album is a snoozefest. It seems that GYOW is the most played song from Rumours.

mick smacking a wooden stool iirc

Probably the best pop album of the 70s

when it comes down to it, I just think it's dull.

I was on a 1977 binge recently and after listening to Love Gun and Foreigner S/T, I notice the same thing. There's just the lead single and that's it, there's no other real songs on the album.

See, the great thing about Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin was that they had entire albums of good songs, not just one single surrounded by eight filler tracks.

Where did your lives go so wrong that you can't even enjoy Rumours?

I'm a Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac kinda guy. Nothing after their first two albums.

neat thanks, always wondered

Correct. The hippie-era Fleetwood Mac was sick, by the Carter years they'd grown up and just wanted to make boring adult contemporary. Kind of like Bob Seger and Eric Clapton.

As someone who saw the Rumours Tour and bought he album the week it was released the music was just good for time. FM had been featured several times on the Midnight Special and SN was pretty much considered gorgeous. Which never hurts record sales with the male teen demographic. demographic. Also the ST Album had done very well and "Rumours" was anticipated and fueled by the single success of "Dreams"..

At least Black Sabbath never went down that road.

Sabbath managed a comeback because of the late 70s resurgence of metal. Guys like Clapton were rooted in hippie psych rock that was clearly never coming back, so they just decided to phone it in and become MOR so they could get on the radio and make $$$.

I can't help but think how poorly Jimi Hendrix's career would unfold had he lived into the post-counterculture era.

ITT virgins

lol, the denial metalfags have about the commodification of their shitty genre

It's MOR, but it's decent MOR that avoids being cheesy or derivative.

Dreams is a good song

Gold Dust Woman is a cool song.

How can Sup Forums shit all over this yet suck Pet Sound's cock 24/7?

DON'T STOP. THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

love that song

I don't hate Rumours, I just think its reputation is over-inflated.

I don't understand why Rumours is the most acclaimed album when Tusk is much better and diverse.

Because Pet Sounds was way ahead of it's time and was an incredibly unique album. Rumours was behind it's time, by the late 70's there was tons of music like that.

Tusk was an album like The Long Run, Spirits Having Flown, and Bad...it had the unenviable task of following up its colossal predecessor.

Cuz youre wrong?

That's one of the best albums of all time and one of my favorites as well

Neat cover art btw, you could tell from it that the 80s were about to begin.

Yeah, I agree so ahead of it's time

>dude holy shit, what if we make shitty pop rock, BUT WAIT, we're gonna add random shit like harpsichords and theremins and other goofy shit like bike bells all over the place and then we're gonna distort the shit out of it so you can't hear them anyway, hipster faggots will be eating it up in 50 years I swear

THIS
Tusk is like a second White Album

A funny thing happened in 1977-78, which was a string of multiplatinum giant albums, namely Rumours, Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, Hotel California, and Bat out of Hell. But then in 1979, the record industry experienced a collapse that occurred from several factors, including the economic recession, disco burnout, and as you said, the disappointing followups to Rumours et al. Not until 1982 would recovery begin.

>Which never hurts record sales with the male teen demographic
Kinda doubt that teenage males were the primary audience for Rumours. This shit wasn't Kiss or UFO by a long shot.

Hotel California was 76. Same year as Boston s/t, another AAA record

Yes but it came out at the end of 1976 and was dominating the charts for almost two years straight.

Fair enough. I've been hearing about the late 70s period from my dad my whole life. That string of albums we went through was his shit. Especially Bee Gees

Then you would be wrong. Rock and Roll was mixed genere then. I was 17 in 1977 and most everyone I know had a copy of Rumours either on LP, 8-Track, or Cassette. It spawned 4 Top 10 singles and Dreams was #1 hit. It had mass genre appeal.

Now consider that those albums were what the vast sea of normalfags were listening to back then, not punk bands or Rush or whatever (only weird, antisocial nerds listened to that stuff).

>I was 17 in 1977 and

Is that you, Dave Mustaine?

>and Dreams was #1 hit
Of the four singles from Rumours, it seems that you don't hear Dreams or You Make Loving Fun anymore, just the other two.

Realtalk: was anyone listening to Rush ?

It's a great collection of well-written pop songs, from start to finish.

Not until Moving Pictures.

One more question: how much of punk was mainstream/listened to ?

>Of the four singles from Rumours, it seems that you don't hear Dreams or You Make Loving Fun anymore, just the other two.
This is actually true. I'd never heard Dreams in my entire life until last year. I'm 27.

Right, they were kind of a niche AOR band ala Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult. Aerosmith apparently wanted to be same, but Columbia pushed them into being the next Led Zeppelin which led to them breaking down and succumbing to drug addiction.

Right, Rush were kind of a niche AOR band ala Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult. Aerosmith apparently wanted to be same, but Columbia pushed them into being the next Led Zeppelin which led to them breaking down and succumbing to drug addiction.

And be honest that you learned about Don't Stop from the Simpsons.

Also applies to Judas Priest and British Steel.

Fleetwood Mac's best song is a B-side

The Green Manalishi was a non-album single though.

Question: was Rumours the start of New Wave?

Don't Stop" was also Bill Clintons Campaign song for his first term. FW played it live at his Inaugural Ball.

youtube.com/watch?v=A3JA1nWPFqM

What part of it sounds New Wave?

Don't Stop is still played today, but Go Your Own Way definitely the most.

Nothing, but it seemed to start a pattern of easy-to-listen-to music

It doesn't sound the slightest bit new wave. Blondie were New Wave, they had more of a punk edge mixed with the female vocal pop-rock.

Like someone else said, Rumours didn't innovate or do anything not already established in 70s adult contemporary.

>sandy beiges

yep

New Wave has compressed instruments, synths, and an obvious dance rhythm to it. Nothing on Rumours fits that description.

Fleetwood gave way to the style of pop that become big in the 80's but New Wave was more of a mainstream form of punk which Fleetwood were the complete opposite of.

And the font and general graphics design looks 80s.

thanks anons you rock

New Wave was Bondie and The Knack..and Cheap Trick for that matter. At least they considered such early in their career.

Also New Wave has a sparse feel to it. If you've heard Heart of Glass, you know what New Wave sounds like.

The Chain is the best song off it

youtube.com/watch?v=P160_odTwyY

I listened to this for the all the way through last night, what a fucking masterpiece.
I can't believe I initially disregarded it as trash.

>they put almost all their songwriting effort into the singles (specifically Don't Stop and Go Your Own Way) and forgot about the rest of the album.

The one before it has all the better songs imo. Rhiannon is God tier.

Also this.

Punk was for music geeks; the kids who listened to it were usually the ones who started bands. The average normalfag teenager in the late 70s listened to plebshit like Kiss and Foreigner.

>The average normalfag teenager in the late 70s listened to plebshit like Kiss and Foreigner

Kiss did influence a lot of bands though, and their legacy lives on in costume/corpsepaint bands. Plus Ace Frehley made a lot of kids want to pick up a guitar.

What punk band had the most mainstream appeal? The Clash?

"Punk rock was a media-driven phenomenon. I saw Judas Priest in '77 during the height of punk and there were several thousand people there. Most of the kids stayed with the conventional bands."

-- Ian Gillan

Ok, but Priest at that time were still very niche/alternative compared with the likes of Foreigner and the Eagles.

They were popular in the UK by 1977, but Americans had a hard time digesting them at first. Especially because on their first US tour, they were paired up with normalfag bands like REO Speedwagon, so the fans of those bands were like LOLwut.

REO Speedwagon are like the McDonalds of rock-and-roll.

Late 70s guy: "Hey Susie, I got us some concert tickets."
Late 70s girl: "Cool, Dave. What band is i..." (sees REO Speedwagon tickets) "I'm leaving you."

After the counterculture era wound down, the record industry set forth to tame the wild beast known as rock-and-roll. This led to the birth of so-called corporate rock, generally consisting of veteran session musicians whom a record label would assemble into a band and make radio-friendly songs based on cliches.

Bread may have been the first such band, and since they came out in 1969, we may assume that this was coming even when the counterculture era was at its height. The Doobie Brothers, who put out their first album two years later, may have been the first major corporate rock band. There followed many others like Styx, Kansas, Black Oak Arkansas, Foghat, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, and Journey. Once the Vietnam era came to an end, the rock world came to be dominated by these bands in a hurry. Thus it was no surprise that punk rock was greeted as a relief from the stale mid-70s rock scene.

Also that bete noire of rock fans in the late 70s, disco, happened largely because rock at the time had ceased to be danceable. It was slow, torpid, and melodramatic, designed for listening to while stoned.

Yeah, it was stale. I mean, how many years could you spam Jumpin' Jack Flash on rock radio and not get bored of it.

>because rock at the time had ceased to be danceable. It was slow, torpid, and melodramatic, designed for listening to while stoned.
Really? What about the new wave bands all coming about, Cars, Blondie, B-52s, Elvis Costello, etc.

REO reached their peak in 1980 with "Hi Infidelity". in the late 70's they were still considered a "cool" band and most everyone really liked "Riding the Storm Out" Which is pretty much the only song anyone knew from them.

Conventional rock.

Literally this.

REO Speedwagon and Foreigner both went off the rails in the 80s when they turned into nothing but balladeers. At least Journey never forgot how to do rockers.

If you're not that into music, but you're not a total retard, Rumours is a good compromise because Nicks/Buckingham are just varied enough as songwriters/performers that they're respectable, yet it's still easy on the ear.

To put it another way, it's like high-end normcore. It's a way to like pop music without looking like a complete dumbass. Christine's songs are stupid as FUCK on this one, though.

Foreigner are the best of the corporate rock, for what it's worth. Boston is better but I don't consider them corporate rock since it's just a dude in his basement.

Rumours [Reprise, 1977]

Why is this easy-listening rock different from all other easy-listening rock, give or take an ancient harmony or two? Because myths of love lost and found are less invidious (at least in rock and roll) than myths of the road? Because the cute-voiced woman writes and sings the tough lyrics and the husky-voiced woman the vulnerable ones? Because they've got three melodist-vocalists on the job? Because Mick Fleetwood and John McVie learned their rhythm licks playing blues? Because they stuck to this beguiling formula when it barely broken even? Because this album is both more consistent and more eccentric than its blockbuster predecessor? Plus it jumps right out of the speakers at you? Because Otis Spann must be happy for them? Because Peter Green is in heaven? A

Have you listened to Band of Gypsy's? I think Hendrix would have gone funk, a contemporary of George Clinton

>Plus it jumps right out of the speakers at you?

That's not necessarily a good thing since I found the mix on Rumours too loud at times, especially on the acoustic numbers.

>Foreigner are the best of the corporate rock, for what it's worth

At least they're not as nauseating as Journey. Steve Perry's voice alone is abuse to your eardrums.

The whole album is great.
Fleetwood Mac is great.
I Don't Want to Know is the GOAT pop song.

You are a straight up plebeian if you don't like them.

I'd hate Journey a lot less if not for Don't Stop Believing's omnipresence in popular culture. Fuck that song. It's like Bohemian Rhapsody.