CNN
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There’s a reason why Christine McVie was considered the heart of Fleetwood Mac.
The band’s keyboardist, who died Wednesday after a brief illness at age 79, was also the writer of some of the group’s best-loved songs.
Here are just five of those tunes:
It is related to some drama.
Fleetwood Mac is, in part, known for their tumultuous relationships, especially when it comes to romantic ones.
Band members Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham had a thing that ended badly, and McVie famously married and then divorced her other bandmate, John McVie.
He reportedly thought of the song, with its lyrics “Sweet wonderful you / You make me happy with the things you do / Oh, could it be / This feeling follows me, wherever I go”. I go,” was about his dog because McVey was married at the time.
But it turns out that Christine McVie wrote the love song in honor of the band’s lighting director, with whom she had an affair.
Another tune from their famous “Rumors” album.
“Don’t Stop” proved to be a hopeful song for the future, so meaningful to former President Bill Clinton that he used it as his 1992 campaign anthem.
On Wednesday, he tweeted a tribute to McVie.
“I am saddened by the passing of Christine McVie. “Don’t Stop” was my ’92 campaign theme song – it perfectly captured the mood of a nation yearning for better days,” he tweeted. “I am grateful to Christine and Fleetwood Mac for entrusting us with such a meaningful song. I will miss her.”
It was actually a solo song for McVie.
The first single from her self-titled solo album, it sounds like it could be a Fleetwood Mac song, with its fast tempo and infectious chorus, “Oh, I found a love / I found someone / This love got a hold of me.” Made it.
Plus Buckingham plays guitar on it, giving it even more of a Fleetwood Mac vibe.
“Say You Love Me” is a fun tune that has become a mainstay on rock and easy listening radio stations.
In a 1990 interview, she, Nicks and Buckingham reflected on the sweet harmony.
“The first time I started playing ‘Say You Love Me’ and I got to the chorus, he started singing along with me and just fell right in,” Performing Songwriter magazine reported her as saying. “I heard this incredible sound, three of our voices … and my skin turned to goosebumps.”
It seems fitting that so many people on social media used this song to pay tribute to McVie after he passed away.
The ballads he wrote have been pointed out as solemn recollections of a lost person.
It feels haunting to play it now after her death as she pours her heart out in the opening lyrics, “For you, there will be no more crying / For you, the sun will be shining / And I feel that when I’m with you / It OK, I know it’s true.