Fleetwood Mac: "Dreams" - Vinyl Friday #77
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2024
- Welcome to episode three of The Rumours Mill!
This is a breakdown of a song that came VERY close to being rather tedious. Fortunately, it escaped that fate to become not only one of the best pop songs of the 1970s, but a massive viral hit four decades later.
In this episode: new correspondents! New title cards! Mick Fleetwood makes a little farting sound with his mouth.
And once we're done with all that, we continue in our pursuit of understanding Who Won the Breakup!
As a side note (and this may be a bit of a vapid thing for me to say) I'm so excited that Vinyl Friday #77 is about an album from 1977. Not planned, totally organic, 100% thrilling. It's the little things.
As an unrelated side note, on viewing, I think I said the word "kōkako" identically every time. It just sounded weird coming out of my head as it was happening. Does that ever happen to you?
Anyway... Happy Fleetwood Friday, folks.
For those of you with a burning desire to generally support what I do, I'm here to help you along in that journey: www.buymeacoffee.com/fathommu... (but no pressure, friends☺️)
"Fleetwood Mac's Rumours - but with better sequencing" playlist: open.spotify.com/playlist/6K8...
0:00 Hello!
2:01A new correspondent!
3:29 A bit of backstory
5:10 Why track 3?
5:23 Is it boring?
7:15 No way!
13:46 Honourable mentions quick-fire round!
15:52 A Hanson aside
17:14 Who won the breakup?!
19:01 Goodbye!
Want to look at pictures of what I'm working on? / fathommusicnz
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Fathom albums "The World to Breathe" and "Modern Reflections, Vol. 1" are also available on all streaming platforms. Tweed's album "High Brow Blues" is also ALSO available on all streaming platforms!
Thanks for your sharing your attention with me. :)
Stock Footage provided by bornreadyfilms, from Pond5
#fleetwoodmac #rumours #classicalbums #musicreview #musicreaction #vinyl #vinylcommunity #vinylreccords #dreams
Why do you think this song has stood the test of time? I'd love to know your takes!
I think it's consoling both in sound and intent, despite it's genesis. there are important bullet points, rain ( the tenderest moments occur in the rain - i made that up myself) heartbeats, memory. maybe because there's a quiet resilience there. she sings it beautifully.
I grew up with Dreams and as a little kid I thought it WAS boring, lol, but here's my theory: as a kid being bored was the worst, but in retrospect, I long for those slow summer days... that boredom was freedom-- time spent day dreaming, drawing, relaxing...this song sums up that nostalgia for feeling relaxed and that's why the skateboarder has got the vibe just right.
Nothing boring about this song. Perfect rhythm section, nice volume swell guitar lines, and Stevie's voice. Nothing better.
I'm a white bloke in my late 40s, and I bet these same people wouldn't tell me that I'm not a real Beatles fan. And I bet they wouldn't tell old white people in their 70s, 80s and 90s that they are not real fans of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven.
One of my favorite groups in high school and college…1979-84. Am seeing Stevie in concert June, 15, 2024. Love them and her. Great discussion.
Never noticed it's only two chords! I think it works though, it has that feel of like driving and having deep and focused thoughts, whole track is tight. Thats interesting they must have figured out somehow it should be a tight groovy track and further away from a ballad. Geniuses lol (specially Stevie 😁)
It is obvious that you don't need to have grown up with a specific musical artist or group to be able to appreciate them and be a fan. I didn't discover The Beatles until 1979 but I am a huge fan and love their music. It is true that I missed out on the specific cultural impact The Beatles made during the 60s as it was happening. The fans who come of age as an artist's music is dominant in the culture do have that unique experience shared with others of their generation. That doesn't preclude future generations from being genuine fans who love an artist's music. Their perspective may be different versus those who grew up with the music but it is still relevant to them. Good music transcends generations and lives on through every new fan who discovers the music.
Love what you say about her voice.
For the record, I greatly appreciate Beethoven, and although some may be surprised, I was not alive during the Romantic period.
Here's an interesting quote I found from Stevie Nicks:
Sometimes when I write a song, I’ll just write the first two verses and the chorus, and in my head I know I still have to write another verse, and maybe I’ll do that down the line a couple weeks later or maybe even a month or two later, but it’s very set in stone because-I always have a tape recorder going, and usually the first time, if I’m singing [sings] “Now there you go again, you say you want your freedom /who am I to keep you down?”-I’m not changing that. And I know it. The second it comes out of my mouth, I’m like “Oh, that was good.” So I have a little overhead lightbulb thing that goes off, so then I’m never going to go back and change that even though a good example is Don Henley-I was going out with Don Henley when I was writing “Dreams,” and it says [sings], “When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.” Well, he didn’t like that [sings]“washes you” [accent on “es”], and he wanted me to go, “When the rain washes you clean” [accent on “wash”]. And I’m like, “No, I don’t like it.” [laughs] And he’s like, “Well, wash-ES doesn’t sound good,” and I’m like, “Well, wash-ES is the way it’s gonna be.” So then you start getting into that with somebody, and we’re talking an ego [of] a fantastic songwriter here. So I’m arguing with Don Henley over this, you know? That’s why I really stayed away from writing songs with other people.
Source: americansongwriter.com/gold-dust-woman-a-qa-with-stevie-nicks/
That absolutely makes sense. Technically correct, but WASHes sounds absolutely awful. I've only tried writing music with another person once, and in the end, each of us took what we'd been working on and wrote the song we actually wanted to write. 😅
Haha. The "es" syllable emphasis is what makes that line so fun to sing
I'm so here for who won the breakup. Serve that tea! Also you kinda look like Grandma Yetta in your velour. I say this with love.
I'm so excited to find out who wins. I'm making up the scores on the spot, after breaking down the song, so even I don't know.
I'm taking the Yetta comparison as a compliment.
It might not be fair to deduct points for the simple chord progression . One of the cool things about the song is that the melody, when isolated, is definitely in Am (almost exclusively Am pentatonic, although she sneaks the b note in) while the chords only play Fmaj7 to G6 (while she’s singing) over and over. So, the music never plays the tonic, or resolves in a typical way. Complexity in simplicity.
The Corrs' version definitely helped, circa 1998?
well said, soapbox correspondent. i enjoy lindsey's work more than stevie's but you'll never hear me say "dreams", "storms" and many, many others aren't classics. should he have been unceremoniously kicked out of group? no. when you're already doing mountains of coke, the option of going to sly's place is remarkably bad idea (says person who didn't write a #1 hit like "dreams").
Dreams is a great mythological song. It works equally well for leaving an old religion as it does leaving a marriage.
What a fascinating take! Thanks.
You quote Christine but cut off her part about how Lindsey then “fashioned three sections out of identical chords, making each section sound completely different. He created the impression that there’s a thread running through the whole thing.” Christine said she never knew what to do with Stevie's songs - that she needed Lindsey to translate them into music first for her to contribute.
The idea that the rest of the band didn't treat Stevie right or respect her songwriting is ridiculous. They gave her center stage from the start even when she only sang lead on 2-3 songs and didn't play an instrument. As a band they worked more on her songs than any others because she came in with a melody carried by her voice but otherwise musically bereft. She also often came in with long unwieldy songs - GDW, Silver Springs and Sara all started off at 10 minutes plus. Then she complained all her songs couldn't make it on a limited vinyl with two other great singer/songwriters. if she wanted SS on the album she should have let them edit down more of her three songs - she refused. Cutting say Oh Daddy - so Christine then had 9 minutes of solo material so that Stevie could have 15 - how would that be fair?
That Stevie clip about Lindsey making her music wonderful only when he was happy with her.... he wasn't happy with her during Dreams or Rumours - she said that - yet he still worked his ass off producing, arranging and composing and playing parts for her songs.
“I remember the night I wrote ‘Dreams.’ I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsey. It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano. Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. We were couples who couldn’t make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other - and we got some brilliant songs out of it.”
I reckon there's a real art to the (very nearly) 2-chord song. It can be uninspiring but a really good one is just hypnotic. To that end, I'd submit "Like a Rose" by Lucinda Williams as another exemplar: czcams.com/video/v0uH79sGSM8/video.html
This 'correcting mistakes' stuff you spoke about ( in the Hanson segment) , that's partly the reason modern music is so sterile and boring. Machines have removed the humanity from modern music and basically are an audio version of Photoshop where amateur musicians/fans are trying to naturally recreate a digitally perfect vocal and performance that never existed in the first place. Mistakes are brilliant occasionally, such as accidental guitar feedback..etc. They are the character of the music and probably the reason 78% of Spotify streams are of pre-1998 (autotune) era.
mete...hang on... meteorologically speaking she's wrong, thunder doesn't only happen when it's raining! poetically she's on the money. i like the way, generally, stevie allows a song to be a song and not some precise explanation of a situation or emotion. neil young too. we can then take control as we can with any text and overlay meanings with our own readings.
the soap box is a good addition, especially when people can't throw things at you: go for it. now you can overpower us. ageism is irritating or wrong at the societal level whichever way it runs.
so what was that phrase a crock of what? couldn't work it out LoL.
Precisely, well said. I'm always a fan of lyrics that show, as opposed to telling. I think Lindsey is a bit more of a "teller".
By the logic of those commentators, no one could possibly be a real fan of Bach.
Sebastian Bach, yes, but JS Bach, no.