“The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac

"The Chain" is the one song on Fleetwood Mac's 1977 blockbuster Rumours that all five of them share a writing credit on: Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. It wasn't written so much as stitched together. Scraps that had been tossed aside, bits of Buckingham, bits of Nicks, bits of McVie, were pieced into one song at the Record Plant in Sausalito, much of it by hand, with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut cutting the tape with a razor blade.

You'd never guess from the sound of it. It's the darkest, toughest thing on the record: Fleetwood's kick drum pounding like a slow march, Buckingham's guitar coiled and menacing, Christine McVie's keyboards lurking in the background, and three voices, Buckingham's, Nicks's and Christine McVie's, locked together in harmony that sounds more like a vow than a love song. Then everything drops away for the instrumental break, John McVie's bass steps forward, and the band comes charging back in.

That break has had a life of its own in Britain, where it became the theme for Formula One coverage on the BBC and Channel 4. On stage the song usually opens the show, as it did on the 1997 live release The Dance, and it's now the band's second most streamed track on Spotify, with more than 1.5 billion plays.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.