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Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number

One series on our last episode. We talked about the formation of transatlantic band Fleetwood

Mac and how the songwriting of the late Christine McVee carried

them from their early days as British blues rock hitmakers through a long early 70s dry spell.

We're now up to the late 70s, the Americans Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie

Nix have joined the band.

And their songs, and

McVees, are going to power

Fleetwood Mac's biggest

LP ever.

The album that would

become rumors began

to take shape before the

promotional cycle for 1975's Fleetwood Mac LP was even half over.

The self-titled LP took so long to climb the charts that Rumors was largely in the can

before its predecessor even hit number one in the fall of 76. That doesn't

mean recording the follow-up had been easy. Listen to the wind blow, watch the sunrise. Infamously, every member of Fleetwood Mac, literally all five of them,

underwent some kind of romantic breakup during the making of rumors.

For those who need a brief recap, John and Christine McVee divorced in 1976.

Years of John's alcoholism, as well as the toil of life on the road and working together

...