Back in 1977, the Rumours surrounding Fleetwood Mac were everywhere as the members worked through internal conflicts on the world stage. But this relationship turmoil formed the emotional core of the British-American rock band’s seminal album—and it inspired the lyrics on their one and only No. 1 on the Hot 100: “Dreams.” As it turns out, it only took 10 minutes for Stevie Nicks to churn out a timeless classic.
During the Rumours recording sessions, Nicks found herself in Sly Stone’s studio at the Record Plant. “It was a black-and-red room with a sunken pit in the middle where there was a piano, and a big, black-velvet bed,” she told Blender. “I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me… and wrote ‘Dreams’ in about 10 minutes.”
The song details the sound of a man’s loneliness driving him mad after breaking up with his lover—a direct reference to bandmate and recent ex Lindsey Buckingham. With a characteristic dose of mysticism, “Dreams” is constructed around Nicks’ penchant for relaying personal experience through earthy metaphors:
Thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing
Women they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know
The album took on a he-said-she-said veneer as Buckingham imbued his own perspective in “Go Your Own Way,” which is considered a companion piece to Nicks’ composition. On the track, the lead guitarist took Nicks to task for spurning his love:
Tell me why everything turned around
Packing up, shacking up’s all you wanna do
If I could, baby, I’d give you my world
Open up, everything’s waiting for you
“Even though ‘Go Your Own Way’ was a little angry, it was also honest,” she wrote in the liner notes for the 2013 reissue of Rumours. “So then I wrote ‘Dreams,’ and because I’m the chiffony chick who believes in fairies and angels, and Lindsey is a hardcore guy, it comes out differently. Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I’m] singing about the rain washing you clean. We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing.”
However, bandmate Christine McVie wasn’t impressed with Nicks’ original demo. “When Stevie first played it for me on the piano, it was just three chords and one note in the left hand,” she told Blender. “I thought ‘This is really boring,’ but the Lindsey genius came into play and he 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.”
“It was most difficult for Lindsey because Stevie was the one who pulled away emotionally,” founding member Mick Fleetwood added. “He would say, ‘I’m doing this for her and making her music, but I can’t have closure.’”
The former couple continued touring together until 2018, when Buckingham was cut from the Fleetwood Mac lineup. The two parties settled a lawsuit last December, after the guitarist claimed that the dismissal cost him millions in lost earnings.
Last year, a meme boosted “Dreams” onto Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart at No. 14. In a since-deleted tweet, user @bottledfleet posted a video of Alcorn State University’s Golden Girls dance team performing a routine soundtracked by the song.
Nicks recently became the first woman to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, after being inducted as a soloist in March. “She’s the magically gypsy godmother that occupies all the space in between,” protégé Harry Styles said in an induction speech.
Read the full Blender story here, and catch up on all the lyrics to “Dreams” on Genius now.
