Generations of music fans continue to love Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours for reasons that are hard to disentangle. It is a piece of immaculate studio craft, a guilty pleasure that long ago became canonical, and a set of songs in which private misery is made to sound panoramic. Its appeal lies partly in that contradiction: deceptively simple songs, lavish harmonies, gleaming arrangements and emotional warfare polished until it shines.
You may already have worked your way through the surrounding Fleetwood Mac albums: the self-titled 1975 breakthrough, which turned them from British blues survivors into a California-based Anglo-American supergroup; 1979’s Tusk, the sprawling, experimental double album; and 1982’s Mirage, their return to soft-rock elegance. But there is a broader Rumours-adjacent world out there: records made in the slipstream of Laurel Canyon, Philadelphia soul, LA session pop and transatlantic AOR, full of lush harmonies, expert musicianship, romantic recrimination and glorious production.
1
BUCKINGHAM NICKS
Buckingham Nicks
(POLYDOR, 1973)
Fleetwood Mac’s earlier incarnation as a British blues band has little in common with the group they became after Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined in 1975. The true ur-text of Rumours is this one-off album by the two American singer-songwriters before they met Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie and John McVie. Buckingham and Nicks (who met at high school in 1966) had already discovered their peculiar combination of acoustic intimacy, California gloss and emotional tension. “Frozen Love”, in particular, points straight towards the scale and drama of Rumours.
2
THE EAGLES
One of These Nights
(ASYLUM, 1975)
Probably the closest non-Fleetwood Mac equivalent in terms of mid-1970s Los Angeles studio perfection: multiple songwriters and singers, immaculate harmonies, romantic disillusionment and country-rock being transformed into something sleek, nocturnal and expensive-sounding. “Lyin’ Eyes” is practically a domestic novel in AOR form, while the title track pushes the Eagles towards the smooth, anxious sophistication that would dominate the second half of the decade.
3
HEART
Little Queen
(PORTRAIT, 1977)
Heart’s 1970s work has often been obscured by the big-haired power ballads the band delivered in the 1980s, but their third album, released only a few months after Rumours, occupies a related sonic world. Ann Wilson’s soaring, dramatic voice balances raw power with ethereal mysticism, scratching some of the same itch as Stevie Nicks, while Nancy Wilson’s fingerpicking guitar on tracks such as “Dream of the Archer” and “Sylvan Song” echoes Fleetwood Mac’s folksier, more acoustic moments. Heart also came with its own tangled inter-band romance: Ann was dating the band’s manager, Mike Fisher, while Nancy was dating his brother Roger, the band’s lead guitarist. The hard-rocking lead single “Barracuda” added another layer of fury, taking aim at the sleazy industry gossip that had surrounded the sisters.
4
NED DOHENY
Hard Candy
(COLUMBIA, 1976)
Born into privilege as the son of an oil tycoon, Ned Doheny made his name on the Los Angeles circuit, playing guitar on sessions with the likes of Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and J D Souther. His second solo album is one of the great cult artefacts of that scene: soft, funky, harmonically luxurious and almost absurdly tasteful. Where Rumours turns heartbreak into drama, Hard Candy turns it into something smooth and frictionless. Songs such as “A Love of Your Own”, “If You Should Fall” and “I’ve Got Your Number” sit somewhere between singer-songwriter confession, blue-eyed soul and yacht rock before the term existed. The grooves are supple, the guitars glisten, the backing vocals glow, and Doheny’s voice carries the slightly wounded air of a man trying to sound casual about romantic disappointment.
5
HALL & OATES
Abandoned Luncheonette
(ATLANTIC, 1973)
Released four years before Rumours, Hall & Oates’s second album was produced by R&B maestro Arif Mardin, but songs such as “When the Morning Comes”, “Had I Known You Better Then” and “Lady Rain” move towards a kind of folksy, heartbroken, acoustic-guitar-led AOR that is not far from Fleetwood Mac’s later universe. Even the exquisite blue-eyed soul of “She’s Gone” and “Las Vegas Turnaround” specialises in nostalgia, regret and expensive melancholy — all qualities likely to appeal to Rumours devotees.
6
ANDREW GOLD
All This and Heaven Too
(ASYLUM, 1978)
Gold was a phenomenally talented multi-instrumentalist who worked deep inside the LA studio ecosystem, accompanying Linda Ronstadt, Art Garfunkel and James Taylor, among others. His third solo album — featuring the UK hit “Never Let Her Slip Away”, the future Golden Girls theme “Thank You for Being a Friend”, the country-rocker “I’m on My Way” and the shameless guilty pleasure “How Can This Be Love” — is immaculately layered singer-songwriter pop: stacked harmonies, clever instrumental details and romantic disappointment polished until it gleams. One of the great Rumours-adjacent records.
7
SUPERTRAMP
Breakfast in America
(A&M, 1979)
Some of the Rumours-adjacent British AOR of this era — by 10cc, Gerry Rafferty and Richard and Linda Thompson, for instance — adds a certain English wryness and cynicism that can scuff the polished studio-rock surface. Supertramp’s biggest album has a touch of that spikiness, and is a less romantic proposition than Fleetwood Mac, but, like Rumours, it is a supreme example of apparently straightforward pop songs being made monumental by arrangement and production (it was recorded at The Village in West LA, the same studio that birthed Tusk, Gaucho, Aja, Hotel California and Songs In The Key of Life). Two contrasting writers and singers, glossy acoustic instruments, enormous choruses and immaculate detail: it belongs in the same conversation, even if it comes at heartbreak from a more sardonic angle.
8
CHRISTOPHER CROSS
Christopher Cross
(WARNER BROS., 1979)
Christopher Cross’s debut is now treated as the dictionary definition of what became known as “yacht rock”: absurdly smooth, but harmonically and texturally sophisticated. It went multi-platinum, won five Grammys and featured four huge hits: “Ride Like the Wind”, “Sailing”, “Say You’ll Be Mine” and “Never Be the Same”. Cross himself was not ideally suited to the image-driven MTV decade that followed, but the album takes the studio-crafted world of Rumours into the next era: every surface buffed, every chorus airborne, every pang of longing tastefully arranged.
9
TOTO
Toto IV
(CBS, 1982)
Toto were the ultimate LA session men, the bedrock of countless Quincy Jones productions and records by Boz Scaggs, Steely Dan, Seals and Crofts, Christopher Cross, Lionel Richie, George Benson, Don Henley and Aretha Franklin. Their fourth LP is an immaculate piece of AOR engineering, turning tiny pop ideas into cathedrals. “Rosanna”, “Africa” and “I Won’t Hold You Back” are the obvious calling cards, but the whole record speaks to one of the pleasures of Rumours: the sense that adult romantic confusion can be rendered with almost supernatural studio precision.
10
CARLY SIMON
No Secrets
(ELEKTRA, 1972)
The oldest album on this list, No Secrets connects the high-gloss emotional chaos of Rumours with the warm, confessional Laurel Canyon songcraft of Carole King’s Tapestry. Producer Richard Perry took Simon to Trident Studios in Soho and assembled a backing band that included Lowell George, Klaus Voormann, Nicky Hopkins and Jim Gordon, alongside orchestral arrangements. There is a Christine McVie-like warmth to “The Right Thing to Do” and “Waited So Long”, while “We Have No Secrets” and the beautifully barbed “You’re So Vain” serve as companion pieces to Lindsey Buckingham’s biting kiss-off “Go Your Own Way”. Like Rumours, it makes intimacy sound public, glamorous and dangerous.