How Fleetwood Mac's Dreams Became A Mega-Hit Against All Odds

The break-up dread and affair-fueled folly that helped make Fleetwood Mac's classic album "Rumors" is the stuff of rock and roll legends by now. All five members of the band were going through tragic and tumultuous relationship troubles while recording the record. The fact that anyone could be productive under those circumstances is surprising, let alone come up with a musical collection that has spent 650 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart — more than any other band ever. Every so often, it hits new milestones or jumps back into the top 10, fueled by a needle drop from the record in an ad or a meme that captures the world's attention.

One of the most long-lasting songs on the album is, of course, "Dreams," a haunting offering from Stevie Nicks that gave the Mac its only No. 1 single. It's one of the back-and-forth musical missives sent between Nicks and fellow Mac member Lindsey Buckingham, who were famously breaking up during the making of the album. While Buckingham was throwing shade in the form of "Go Your Own Way," which includes the notoriously catty line "Shacking up's all you wanna do," Nicks was creating an earthy slice of solace to Buckingham, letting him know that they would both be OK in the end.

However, it turns out the song that took Fleetwood Mac to the top of the charts was a happy accident; a mega-hit that wasn't even in the original plans for the album, but showed up just in time.

"Dreams" wasn't among the songs Stevie Nicks had prepared prior to recording. She actually wrote it while in between recording her parts for the other songs on "Rumors." She retreated to a room at The Record Plant in Sausalito, where the band was working, with her Fender Rhodes electric piano and fiddled about with a tune that put a period at the end of her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham. It was ethereal and poetic, with imagery that spoke of "crystal visions" and having dreams to sell. The simple musical structure consisted of two chords only, but she used them to their greatest effect. 

The band applied their musical magic to create a haunting, atmospheric masterpiece with a bit of an R&B groove, even though Buckingham took offense at what Nicks had written. In particular, the line, "When the rain washes you clean, you'll know," stuck in his craw, though Nicks meant it as a reminder that Fleetwood Mac would survive despite their own breakup. As she explains it, "No matter what happens to Lindsey and I as a couple, this band will go on. We'll see it through, and we'll be all right. He seems to take it a different way." (via Sunset Vinyl.)

However he took it, "Dreams" helped take "Rumors" and Fleetwood Mac into the stratosphere, selling millions of records and soothing countless broken hearts along the way.