Rumours is the eleventh studio album by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 4 February 1977. Recorded with the intention of making ‘a pop album’ that would expand on the commercial success of their self-titled 1975 album, the music of Rumours is characterised by a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation, accented rhythms, guitars, and keyboards, while its lyrics concern personal and often troubled relationships. Its release was postponed by delays in the mixing process. Following the album’s release, Fleetwood Mac undertook worldwide concert tours. Rumours became the band’s first number-one album on the UK Albums Chart. The songs ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Don’t Stop’, and ‘You Make Loving Fun’ were released as singles, all of which reached the US top 10, with ‘Dreams’ reaching number one.

Tracks

1. Second Hand News
2. Dreams
3. Never Going Back Again
4. Don’t Stop
5. Go Your Own Way
6. Songbird
7. The Chain
8. You Make Loving Fun
9. I Don’t Want to Know
10. Oh Daddy
11. Gold Dust Woman

Band members

• Lindsey Buckingham guitars, percussion, vocals
• Stevie Nicks Vocals
• Christine McVie keyboards, vocals, vibraphone
• John McVie bass guitar
• Mick Fleetwood drums, percussion, harpsichord

Rumours was an instant commercial success, selling over 10 million copies worldwide within just a month of its release. It garnered widespread acclaim from critics, with praise centred on its production quality and vocal harmonies, which frequently relied on the interplay among the band’s three vocalists, and which has subsequently inspired the work of musical acts in various genres.

It won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammy Awards and received Diamond certifications in several countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US, in where it is certified 21× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). As of February 2023, Rumours has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the sixth best-selling album of the 1970s, and the 9th best-selling album of all time.

Featuring a soft rock and pop rock sound, Rumours is built around a mix of acoustic and electric instrumentation. Buckingham’s guitar work and Christine McVie’s use of Fender Rhodes piano or Hammond B3 organ are present on all but two tracks. The record often includes drum sounds with interesting accents and distinctive percussion such as congas and maracas.

It opens with ‘Second Hand News’, originally an acoustic demo titled ‘Strummer’. After hearing Bee Gees’ ‘Jive Talkin’‘, Buckingham and co-producer Dashut built up the song with four audio tracks of electric guitar and the use of chair percussion to evoke Celtic rock. ‘Dreams’ includes ‘ethereal spaces’ and a recurring two note pattern on the bass guitar. Nicks wrote the song in an afternoon and led the vocals, while the band played around her. The third track on Rumours, ‘Never Going Back Again’, began as ‘Brushes’, a simple acoustic guitar tune played by Buckingham, with snare rolls by Fleetwood using brushes; the band added vocals and further instrumental audio tracks to make it more layered.

Inspired by triple step dancing patterns, ‘Don’t Stop’ includes both conventional acoustic and tack piano. In the latter instrument, nails are placed on the points where the hammers hit the strings, producing a more percussive sound. ‘Go Your Own Way’ is more guitar-oriented and has a four-to-the-floor dance beat influenced by The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’. The album’s pace slows down with ‘Songbird’, conceived solely by Christine McVie using a nine-foot Steinway piano. ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is influenced by jazz and features a dobro. The song’s lyrics focus on Nicks’ struggle with addiction.

Side two (on vinyl) of Rumours begins with ‘The Chain’, one of the record’s most complicated compositions. A Christine McVie demo, ‘Keep Me There’, and a Nicks song were re-cut in the studio and were heavily edited to form parts of the track. The whole of the band crafted the rest using an approach akin to creating a film score; John McVie provided a prominent solo using a fretless bass guitar, which marked a speeding up in tempo and the start of the song’s final third.

Inspired by R&B, ‘You Make Loving Fun’ has a simpler composition and features a clavinet, a special type of keyboard instrument, while the rhythm section plays interlocking notes and beats. The ninth track on Rumours, ‘I Don’t Want to Know’, makes use of a twelve string guitar and harmonising vocals. Influenced by the music of Buddy Holly, Buckingham and Nicks created it in 1974 before they were in Fleetwood Mac.  ‘Oh Daddy’ was crafted spontaneously and includes improvised bass guitar patterns from John McVie and keyboard blips from Christine McVie.  The album ends with ‘Gold Dust Woman’, a song inspired by free jazz, which has music from a harpsichord, a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and a dobro, an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones.