Say You Will

Background

Soon after the release of Time in 1995, Fleetwood Mac decided to disband. Around that time, Lindsey Buckingham was working on a solo album and had invited Mick Fleetwood to play drums on some tracks. As the sessions progressed, John McVie and Christine McVie later became involved with the project. In 1996, Buckingham collaborated with Stevie Nicks on the song "Twisted", which featured drumming from Fleetwood. By 1997, the Rumours lineup agreed to perform again for an MTV Unplugged special. Following the successful reunion album, The Dance, which included a live performance of "Bleed to Love Her", Christine McVie left the group, citing her fear of flying as the primary reason.

In the early 2000s, Buckingham was finishing up a solo album but was encouraged by the band to set the material aside for a Fleetwood Mac record. With the exception of "What's the World Coming To?" and "Peacekeeper", all of Buckingham's Say You Will songs were considered for his aborted solo record. Some of Buckingham's songs on Say You Will were initially developed in the mid-1990s with Fleetwood and Rob Cavallo in Hollywood. Buckingham stated that the music he created during these solo sessions "tapped into some new areas" and were "the best that I've ever done on my own, or with Fleetwood Mac". Some of this material, which according to Buckingham was otherwise finished prior to the Say You Will sessions, later received some bass overdubs from John McVie and vocals from Nicks.

With their surplus of material, the band considered making Say You Will a double album, but opted to condense it into a single disc of 18 songs. 23 songs were ultimately recorded, of which five were cut from the album. "Not Make Believe", "Gift of Screws, "Down on Rodeo", "Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind", and a Rolling Stones cover of "I Am Waiting" were all considered for the track list. "Not Make Believe" was included on the limited edition of Say You Will, "I Am Waiting", "Down on Rodeo", and "Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind" were selected for Buckingham's Under the Skin album in 2006, and "Gift of Screws" appeared on Buckingham's 2008 album of the same name.

The band encountered some difficulties with the sequencing for Say You Will. At the time, Buckingham was mastering the album in Los Angeles and Nicks was in Hawaii, so the two engaged in disagreements on the running order over the phone. According to Nicks, the decision to name the album Say You Will was made by Buckingham the final week she was in Maui. She said the band had referred to the album under the title Strangely Familiar prior to this decision.

Composition and recording

Buckingham wrote "Say Goodbye" soon after his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987. He said that the lyrics were "really important" to him, which he wrote during a time when he was aiming to be "compassionate, understanding, and nonjudgmental about the other people in the band, and about everything that had happened." He also expressed satisfaction with the song's instrumentation and believed that the fingerpicking made it "a really nice guitar piece." In an interview with Rolling Stone, Buckingham said that he wrote the song about Nicks "when most our experience together was behind us." He created both "Say Goodbye" and "Red Rover" around the premise of a guitar underpinning the entire composition, which he likened to his approach to live renditions of "Big Love".

"Come" was a song that Buckingham co-wrote with Neale Heywood, who performed with Fleetwood Mac as a touring guitarist beginning in 1997. In an interview with Classic Rock, Mick Fleetwood identified "Come" as one of his favourite songs on the album along with "Illume". Buckingham wrote "Murrow Turning Over in His Grave" during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. He centered the song's subject matter around the concentration of media ownership and his belief that Edward R. Murrow would be dismayed about the state of mass media. Buckingham based this assumption on a speech from Murrow where he warned about the dangers of television being used to "delude" and "distract" people.

To round out Say You Will, Nicks brought in new material, along with leftovers from previous albums. When Nicks was recording her Trouble in Shangri-La album in 2001, she left the band 17 songs to develop in her absence. The band picked five, including "Smile at You" and "Goodbye Baby", which were written in 1975–76. "Smile at You" was also rehearsed for the Rumours album in 1977, the Tusk album in 1979, and the Mirage album in 1982. "Running Through the Garden" dated back to 1985 and was based on the short story of "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, although Nicks mistakenly thought that the story originated from an episode from The Twilight Zone during the song's composition. Once the song was finished, Nicks considered the title "Rappaccini's Daughter", but decided against it due to anticipated difficulties with securing publishing rights.

Of the 17 tracks that Nicks submitted, between two and three of them were outtakes from Trouble in Shangri-La. One of those songs was "Thrown Down", which was left off Trouble in Shangri-La and reworked for Say You Will. According to Buckingham, Nicks had previously tried three different mixes of "Thrown Down" with three different people, but none of them worked out. "It was just obvious to me it needed a guitar riff in the chorus. It was a fairly simple thing, for some reason. There seems to be an understanding between us as to what to do."

Release

In February 2003, Say You Will was announced for a release date of 15 April 2003, with a world tour planned to begin in Columbus, Ohio on 7 May 2003. Nigel Williamson clarified in Music & Media that the 15 April release date would be for the United States whereas the album would instead be available in Europe two weeks later.

Prior to the release of Say You Will, the band launched a media campaign with NBC to promote the album. A snippet of "Peacekeeper" appeared on the NBC show Third Watch in February. Appearances on the network were also arranged throughout the month of April, including a performance on the Today show and a band profile/interview on Dateline NBC. Say You Will was the first album in the United Kingdom to be simultaneously released on DVD-Audio and CD according to Music Week.

Say You Will was prefaced by the release of "Peacekeeper" as the album's lead single in the United States. It was serviced to AC, Hot AC and Triple A radio stations in March. In the UK, where "Peacekeeper" was released as a radio-only single, WEA established a promotional strategy by primarily promoting the album through printed publications and advertisements in addition to retail. The company also planned a round of television advertising to coincide with a documentary about the making of Say You Will. Say You Will debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at No. 3 with sales of 218,000 units. A documentary titled Destiny Rules was released in March 2004, which featured footage that was filmed during the band's recording sessions at The Bellagio House.

Critical reception

According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Say You Will received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 from 8 critic scores. Many reviewers noted the absence of Christine McVie and the album's length. The Chicago Tribune said that McVie's "dusky voice and deft songwriting touch are missed, particularly on an 18-song disc without enough quality tunes to justify its length". They were more complimentary of Buckingham's arrangements, compositions, and production. Entertainment Weekly wrote that "while the album's highlights shine brightly, the absence of the group's least heralded songwriter [Christine McVie] ultimately proves a significant obstacle".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic believed that the album sounded like "Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks' albums bouncing around on shuffle play, but also [has] occasionally flashing moments that are purely, satisfyingly Fleetwood Mac." Ultimate Classic Rock characterised the album as "a conversation between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, rather than a true band effort." In his book Dark Mirror, Donald Brackett called Say You Will "the best Fleetwood Mac record in years, even with Nicks's shattered voice and monotone nasal renderings." Music Week praised several songs on Say You Will as "really good" and said that the album was "a fine document of a band

who have lost little of their edge."

Nicks expressed some criticism of the album after its release, saying that she found the recording experience unenjoyable due arguments between her and Buckingham that persisted throughout the sessions. She also believed that some of her demos were superior to the renditions that made the final album. Buckingham believed that the album lacked some cohesion but was still satisfied with the overall album, particularly his own tracks.

You could sense a dividing line in terms of style with my songs that were not only new and a little bit edgy, but also a bit off the beaten track from the Fleetwood Mac style, as much as we tried to backtrack on it. So whether those two sets of material found any common ground… that would probably be the one thing I could criticize about the album. Having gone through a process that was a little problematic like that, I was happy with my stuff and the overall outcome of the album.

Track listing

Note

"Bleed to Love Her" was previously available on The Dance as a live version.

Personnel

Fleetwood Mac

Lindsey Buckingham – vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass guitar, percussion, programming

Stevie Nicks – vocals, additional keyboards

John McVie – bass guitar, black keys

Mick Fleetwood – drums, percussion

Additional musicians

John Shanks – additional keyboards (1), additional guitars (8)

Sheryl Crow – backing vocals and Hammond organ (7, 12)

Jamie Muhoberac – Hammond organ (9)

Christine McVie – backing vocals (13–14), keyboards (13–14)

Dave Palmer – acoustic piano (13)

John Pierce – bass guitar on verses (13)

Madelyne Felsch, Molly McVie and Jessica James Nicks – backing vocals (7)

Technical personnel

Lindsey Buckingham – producer, engineer

Rob Cavallo – producer (5, 6, 9, 13, 14)

John Shanks – producer (1, 8)

Ken Allardyce – engineer

Ken Koroshetz – engineer

Ray Lindsey – engineer, band technician

Music promo videos

Music videos were shot for "Peacekeeper" and "Say You Will", both of these videos were stage performances of both songs. Neither of these videos were commercially available until 2019, when Fleetwood Mac published these videos on their official YouTube channel.