Hoping The World Can’t Forget Loving Christine McVie
Music listeners everywhere mourned the loss of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie on the 1st of December, 2022. Losing the British songstress came as a real shock. No one could have anticipated illness to take her away from us seemingly without warning. Beyond unfair, we have lost one of the greatest songwriters in rock and roll, not to mention a heavenly recording artist and performer.
McVie should be remembered first and foremost as a songstress. Hits written solely by McVie contributed significantly to the cosmic success of Fleetwood Mac over the decades. To her credit, McVie wrote the majority of songs on the bands’ biggest-selling albums, starting with 1975’s eponymous album Fleetwood Mac. In it, McVie gave the band Warm Ways, Over My Head, Say You Love Me and Sugar Daddy. On 1977’s Rumors, McVie wrote or co-wrote, and performed, Don’t Stop, Oh Daddy, You Make Loving Fun and (my all-time favorite) Songbird. She also contributed to writing The Chain. Her contributions to the band’s output continued album after album, with over a dozen more songs written by McVie and given to the band’s anthology, such as Over and Over, Everywhere, You and I Part II, and Little Lies.
Outside of Fleetwood Mac, Ms. McVie wrote and released several studio albums, and released the chart-topping 1984 hit song Got a Hold on Me, which dominated the Billboard Adult Contemporary and Rock Tracks charts.
The United Nations has published a statement of 30 intrinsic human rights. Each of the 30 articles was published in 1948, following the atrocities of World War II. The 27th Article from the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads:
1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Human Rights includes both the right to artistic expression, as well as unrestricted access of the artist to the moral and materials interests her creations have garnered. This is an intrinsic part of Rock and Roll. Our culture can’t afford to diminish McVie’s contributions or allow them to go unmentioned. They must be continuously held up and talked about so long as Fleetwood Mac’s hits please our heads and hearts.
We, the enthusiastic music consumers, have enjoyed a long run of polished rock-and-roll acts. The megastar bands whose stellar lead vocals are matched by highly-trained rhythm and strings, et al. Whether thrown together by fate or my music moguls, the stadium-fillers have wooed the American music markets continuously since the 1970’s. While Fleetwood Mac will always be one of our all-time favorite rushes, let us give a special mention always to the original, resident goddess of their clan, Ms. Christine McVie who has now passed through this lifetime, but who has also left us a legacy to cherish and raise the next generation with.
The influence of McVie has been felt everywhere radios have played since 1975. Losing her is like losing a very warm feeling you’ve been able to tap into for years.
When I was fourteen, my mother played Fleetwood Mac The Greatest Hits album on cassette in our family’s minivan, for about a year. She claimed it was stuck inside the machine. The trip to and from my school took one hour. How I remember enjoying all of those 16 Fleetwood Mac songs. I never tried ejecting my mother’s tape, and I learned all of the songs by heart. McVie’s dignity resonates in her voice. Her music always captivated my attention.
Even failing to write something about what McVie meant to me, personally, would have felt like a discourtesy on my part. I am calling upon every fan to say a little something, publicly, about the great Christine McVie. Put her words and music to your lips and fingers and feet, and do something outlandish and public in her memory.
