You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you. Right now, Fleetwood Mac are in the midst of a major gen-Z revival that's been going for years, and their 1977 song "Silver Springs" is a big part of the reason why. "Silver Springs" is currently the band's sixth most popular song on Spotify (as far as trending, not all-time streams). But when the band first recorded "Silver Springs," they didn't even put the song on their blockbuster album Rumours. Instead, it originally came out as the B-side to their "Go Your Own Way" single. Twenty years later, things changed.
Stevie Nicks wrote "Silver Springs," and it's one of the songs about her breakup with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham. For a long stretch in the '90s, both Nicks and Buckingham were out of Fleetwood Mac, and the band carried on unsuccessfully with a different lineup. In 1997, however, the band's classic Rumours lineup got back together to record the live reunion album The Dance. Partly because Fleetwood Mac had already released a different live album and they didn't want the new one to redundant, they added some deep cuts, including "Silver Springs," to their setlist.
Midway through "Silver Springs," Nicks turned to Buckingham and gave him a death-glare while singing about him. He maintained eye contact and kept playing his guitar and singing his backup vocals. It's an electric moment, captured on camera for all the world to see.
The Dance was a big hit, and "Silver Springs" belatedly became a single, with that live video airing on MTV and VH1. In 2023, that video started going viral, partly because it inspired a scene in the Daisy Jones & The Six adaptation. Last year, a Literary Hub article got into the whole history of "Silver Springs," and that history is still going. Earlier this year, a viral TikTok sound had Billy Joel's "Piano Man" transitioning into "Silver Springs." At this point, some longtime Fleetwood Mac fans are concerned about the idea that the song could could overshadow the rest of the band's catalog.
Until recently, Lindsey Buckingham hadn't commented on the "Silver Springs" revival. Buckingham — who was recently attacked by a stalker, who has since been arrested — has lately been making reaction videos with his kids. In one of those videos, he teased a(nother) possible reunion with Stevie Nicks. In a more recent clip, Buckingham said a few words about the "Silver Springs" phenomenon.
In a clip from earlier this week, Buckingham and his kids react to a different performance from The Dance. Near the end of the clip, Buckingham's kids tell him about the "buzz" currently surrounding that song. Buckingham said, "The one where Stevie was staring at me? Well you know, people are going to look for things to read into, right? Mm-hmm." That's it! That's all he said. It happens around the 9:57 mark of the video below.
In another recent video, Buckingham shouted out Sombr, as well as Sam Fender, when asked about which new artists inspire him. Buckingham on Sombr: "I think he's extremely talented, especially for being 20 years old."
In other Fleetwood Mac news, The New York Times' big interactive feature on the 50 best living songwriters includes Stevie Nicks offering an enthusiastic endorsement of Taylor Swift's 2022 song "You're On Your Own, Kid":
I feel that her song is generational. I think it’s all of her relationships written into one song — a little bit of this, a little bit of that — and dropped into my lap. Over time, I have dropped in my own great loves to stand in her story, and it makes me cry for both of us — what we lost, what we learned and how we survived. That is how a great songwriter reaches into people’s hearts and connects with them. All that beauty and tragedy and life’s lessons have led her down this path of unstoppable creativity; she just doesn’t stop, and that is what has turned her into this beautiful young woman who makes magic with everything she touches.
P.S. Yes, this is the song that reconnected Taylor and I. The title of the song is something Christine would have said to me after she passed away — and I felt it came through Taylor. It helped me a lot to let her go.
And, full circle, the feature also had Taylor Swift talking about Sombr.
