Why Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ Is Beloved by Gen-Z (Guest Post)

Veteran music writer and editor Alan Light’s latest book, “Don’t Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac‘s ‘Rumours,’” is out today on Atria Books.

Since its release in 1977, Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” has carved out a remarkable place in the pop music pantheon. Created in a cauldron of intraband romantic turmoil as multiple relationships in the band crashed and burned, and fueled by voracious drug intake, the album was an immediate, spectacular success. Certified 21 times platinum, it’s the seventh best-selling record in U.S. history (worldwide, it has sold more than 40 million copies).

But nearly 50 years later, the album has achieved something that none of its peers can claim: “Rumours” is the single classic-rock album that continues to attract young listeners. It is the only record from rock’s Greatest Generation that doesn’t sound old to successive generations — somehow, after all this time, it doesn’t play like a “classic,” but like present-day pop.

In 2023, “Rumours” was the most streamed album of the 20th century on Spotify (the platform didn’t release that statistic for 2024). The songs “Go Your Own Way” and “The Chain” have more than a billion plays each on Spotify, with its younger listener base than traditional radio, while “Dreams” has over 2 billion, more than such beloved and omnipresent hits as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

Week in and week out, “Rumours” is not only the highest-charting catalog album in Billboard’s top 100 — it’s usually parked around Number 25, though it recently spiked as high as Number 14 — it’s also the only one that’s not a Greatest Hits collection. As the vinyl resurgence continues, the Cool Kids buying LPs have given “Rumours” a permanent spot in the Top Ten of that chart, next to the likes of Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Sabrina Carpenter. Incredibly, in 2024, “Rumours” was the year’s best-selling rock album by any artist, old or new.

This current wave of interest isn’t anything new. “Rumours” has consistently been thrust back into the spotlight and onto the charts, from an all-“Rumours” episode of “Glee” to the 2020 TikTok phenomenon of a guy on a skateboard lip-syncing to “Dreams” to the popular novel and TV series “Daisy Jones & the Six,” inspired by the Fleetwood Mac story.

Curious to better understand this unique cultural marvel, for my new book, “Don’t Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours,’” I spoke to almost 30 post-millennials about their relationship to the album — students and young professionals, male and female, from across the country. What I heard from them was often surprising and challenged some of the basic assumptions held by those of us who grew up with the album in real time.

Historically, “Rumours” gets framed as a story of anger, rage, seething tension. During its recording, the romantic relationship between guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks disintegrated; the marriage of bassist John McVie and keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie ended; and drummer Mick Fleetwood split up with his wife (and eventually, briefly, took up with Nicks). It tops every list of “The Greatest Break-Up Albums of All Time.” Paste magazine wrote that “the album is the 11-track musical equivalent of one withering game of he said/she said.”

But in my conversations with Gen Z fans, few of them talked about “Rumours” in terms of its pain or the agony of its creation, even if they had studied the backstory. Most striking were the listeners who emphasized how happy “Rumours” makes them, and that its purpose for them, contrary to its stormy reputation, is good vibes only.

“I reach out for the album when I’m in a good mood,” said Charlotte Primrose (born 2007). “It has a lot of songs I want to listen to when I’m feeling my most cheerful and carefree.”

While most younger listeners are fascinated by the soap opera behind the album, the full spectrum of emotions — expressed on songs like “You Make Loving Fun” or “Songbird” — is as important to them as the turbulence.

“I think it’s pretty joyful generally,” said Viv Tullis (born 2004). “I’d listen to it when I was with my friends and we were going out or when I was biking to school. If I was going through a breakup, ‘Rumours’ is probably not what I would select.”

In a more multi-cultural world, the “white dudes with long hair and guitars” model seems out-of-date, and the gender composition of Fleetwood Mac came up constantly in my conversations. For first-generation “Rumours” listeners, it’s the Stevie vs. Lindsey story that defines the album, but for 21st century fans, the relationship between Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie is central.

Almost all mixed-gender bands of that era have a single female member, usually the singer or the bass player (Heart and the B-52’s are the other highest-profile exceptions). So the fact that Fleetwood Mac has multiple female singer/songwriters — “Rumours” is the best-selling album in US history with the majority of its songs written and sung by women — is central to its meaning to post-millennials.

“I especially love the relationship between Stevie and Christine,” said Lauren Ostuni (born 1994). “They could have very easily been pitted against each other. But they were like ‘No, we are two females in a male-dominated industry, we need to have each other’s backs,’ and they’ve been sisters since day one.”

“Stevie Nicks and Christine’s friendship is very empowering for women,” adds Kaylee Dinwiddie (born 2000), “because it didn’t seem like they were in competition. Within their music or their friendship, it seemed they were their own people, and it allowed room for both of them to show their story and their writing. It makes me think about friendship and allowing my friends their own space for things.”

It was wildly unexpected to hear that an album created and defined by such chaos was inspiring for these listeners. But they know something we didn’t know in 1977. They see how the story turned out — that ultimately, as captured in the album’s beloved and prescient track “The Chain,” the band continued beyond this tumultuous moment (though there would be plenty more tumult in the Fleetwood Mac story), that the music triumphed, that the explosive passion at the heart of “Rumours” created something that resonates almost half a century later.

Learning about the madness surrounding “Rumours” was initially confusing for Louisa Carey (born 1999), but over time it’s come to represent something more uplifting. “I just couldn’t get over the idea that they were all still making an album while breaking up with each other,” she said. “I didn’t understand the idea that you could be in a relationship and everything was very messy and complicated. That was very confounding as a kid.

“But as I get older,” she continued, “I find an immense amount of comfort in it, that all these really chaotic things were happening in these people’s lives but then everything turned out fine. Everything can be really raw and visceral and then time will pass, and things will settle in one way or another.”

In all, “Rumours” may hit different to those born before and after its release, but in its extreme emotions, it rings out across generations. There’s something viscerally youthful about the project that’s key to its never-ending popularity. Unlike its classic-rock contemporaries, “Rumours” continues to attract young listeners because it sounds and feels like young people created it, in all their raging glory.

As one fan, Ali Resich (born 1989), put it: “Part of why it’s so appealing to younger people is because of that intensity of emotions that went into the recording process. Not being able to escape but having to sit and create in it. That directly correlates to what it’s like to be a teenager and super-angsty and really in the feelings, the first time you’re experiencing all these things. That power and intensity and rawness come out in the music.”