Twenty years later, in the 1997 Classic Albums docuseries, Lindsey Buckingham sits in front of a studio mix board, raising up the volume on his ex-loverвЂ™s grumbling vocals while fading out the instruments. She admits the song was about cocaine, that the band needed it to endure the ever-growing grind on their sanities (the band even considered naming their drug dealer in the album credits). ThereвЂ™s the angry dismissiveness of вЂњGo Your Own Way.вЂќ The tortured devotion in вЂњOh Daddy.вЂќ The shouted duet of Nicks and Buckingham in вЂњThe Chain,вЂќ an echo chamber of bitter fights and ultimatums - вЂњif you canвЂ™t love me now, then youвЂ™ll never love me again.вЂќДЄt the end of вЂњGold Dust Woman,вЂќ Stevie Nicks wails underneath a haze of ungraspable guitars. This album was created in a pressure cooker and every peak and valley, every hot and cool emotion was spilled into it. Throughout the entirety of Rumours, you can hear the tension straining through the vocals.

In that Sausalito studio, Fleetwood Mac labored through eighteen-hour days, recording the sounds of separation with the lovers they were trying to separate from. Christine and John McVie were, too, going through a divorce while Christine began dating the bandвЂ™s lighting director and John disintegrated into jealous, drunken rages. Mick Fleetwood was divorcing his wife after discovering she was having an affair with his best friend. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were splitting up after eight years of romance, erupting into arguments whenever they shared the same room. Prior to its release in 1977, the five members of Fleetwood Mac spent a straight year recording Rumours in The Record Plant Studio, all the while bearing through their infamously crumbling relationships. вЂњDreamsвЂќ is but one hit song on Rumours, which I would dub as the quintessential breakup album. The aftermath of a breakup is never so linear, of course. I play it on headphones while dragging our IKEA furniture out onto the street, dumping our plastic-wrapped mattress on the side of the road. I dance to it while I bathe, while I rifle through crowded drawers, liberating my things from his. I lock back into the driving bass line, the steady drums, the California cool guitar. The way her voice transcends age, she has always sung like an elder. She is a woman meeting a moment of resolve, coming home at the end of a long journey. Well, who am I to keep you down?вЂќ I let StevieвЂ™s voice wash over me, as cool and assured as her lilting high notes. вЂњNow here you go again, you say you want your freedom. I choke down the acid swelling in my throat, every reckless word still bubbling in my body. If I didnвЂ™t, he would throw out all my stuff, change the locks on the doors, and sue me for rent money. I said I would try my best to have all my belongings out by Friday.

We were emailing to arrange a week in December for me to return to the apartment. I check my email on my phone and see the last one he sent, weeks old and glaring in my inbox. The playlist shifts and I plop down onto the couch we picked together, still pungent with the staleness of new upholstery. I watch her and canвЂ™t remember the last time she danced. A girl in her late twenties, hip shaking in her underwear and a tank top, a towel wrapped over her head fresh from the shower. I keep dancing, watching my reflection in the mirror of the flatscreen TV. ThereвЂ™s ample room for me to sashay and twist through the joint living room-kitchen. Turns out, this studio is exactly the right size for one person. Not in the cabinets, not under the bed.Д«ut now, hearing StevieвЂ™s cool rasp soothing my ears, it all feels open. A pile of miscellaneous junk grew in the corner and there was no place to hide anything anymore. The single window in the back of the room shed sunlight only between 11 am and 1. We were on the ground floor of the building surrounded by high rises. When we moved into the Upper East Side studio six months ago, I could feel the walls caving in. For the first time, in a long time, I take up my own space. My arms raise, hailing themselves up towards the white lofted ceiling. My syncopated steps spring all over the hardwood floor. IвЂ™m back here for a week moving my belongings out while my freshly ex-boyfriend of eight years is away. Alone in my studio apartment, I bounce and rock and bloom with abandon to the simplest, most evocative two-note bass line to ever rumble my ears.

Stevie Nicks serenades in rasp while John McVie steadies the undercurrent. ItвЂ™s not long before they coax the rest of my body to move along with them. When the bass line hits, my hips swing, my head bobs, my shoulders sway. When the rain washes you clean youвЂ™ll know.

Fleetwood mac rumours full album 1977