Released in 1977, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” emerged from one of the messiest periods in the band’s history.
While recording the blockbuster album Rumours, multiple relationships within the group were unraveling at once: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham had recently split, Christine and John McVie were separating, and drummer Mick Fleetwood was navigating the collapse of his marriage. Amid the emotional fallout, Nicks wrote what would become the band’s most successful song.
“I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me, found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on, and wrote ‘Dreams’ in about 10 minutes,” Nicks explained to Blender, per Rolling Stone. “Right away I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat, because that made it a little unusual for me.”
In 2009, more than 30 years after the song’s release, Nicks told Daily Mail about the first time she presented the future-hit to Buckingham.
“I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsey,” she said in 2009. “It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano. Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it, and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad – we were couples who couldn’t make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other.”
Despite being born out of heartbreak and tension, “Dreams” went on to become Fleetwood Mac’s only No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The track, the second single from Rumours has landed at No. 9 on Rolling Stone’s Best Songs of All Time list.