This, That, and the Other

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has given us what he calls a “User Choice,” where he explains that we can “can go your own way or do your own thing.” So I thought I’d do just as Jim told me to do: “go your own way” by choosing the Fleetwood Mac song, “Go Your Own Way.”

“Go Your Own Way” was a song by the British-American rock band, Fleetwood Mac, from their 1997 studio album, Rumours. Written and sung by Lindsey Buckingham, it was released as a single in December 1976, prior to the album’s release, and the song became the band’s first top ten hit in the United States.

These were turbulent times for Fleetwood Mac. Not only were Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks at the end of their romantic-turned-caustic relationship, the marriage of band members John and Christine McVie was also coming to an end. With two couples breaking up during the sessions, things could get quite tense, which is why, for most tracks on the Rumours album, none of the instruments were recorded live together. The tracks were instead completed through a series of overdubs.

Lyrically, “Go Your Own Way” was a breakup song, specifically directed at Buckingham’s bandmate and former lover, Stevie Nicks. Buckingham picked up an electric guitar and came up with the chord progression. In what he described as “a stream of consciousness,” he sang the opening line, “Loving you isn’t the right thing to do.”

When she listened to the song, Nicks demanded that Buckingham remove the line “Packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do,” but he ultimately decided to keep those lyrics in the final song. Nicks explained her feelings about the line in an interview with Rolling Stone. She said, “I very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do. He knew it wasn’t true. It was just an angry thing that he said. Every time those words would come onstage, I wanted to go over and kill him. He knew it, so he really pushed my buttons through that. It was like, ‘I’ll make you suffer for leaving me.’ And I did.” Whoa!

Here are the lyrics to “Go Your Own Way.”

Loving you
Isn’t the right thing to do
How can I ever change things
That I feel

If I could
Maybe I’d give you my world
How can I
When you won’t take it from me

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up is all you want to do

If I could
Baby I’d give you my world
Open up
Everything’s waiting for you

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day

You can go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way