"Go Your Own Way" (Fleetwood Mac)

Ah, for every song pleading for a lover to stay, there are at least ten more telling a significant other to piss off.
One of the better examples is Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way," the first single released from the album Rumours (1977).  
Before we talk about the song, I first want to talk about the album.  Whenever people mention Rumours, they always discuss its sales numbers.  "One of the biggest selling albums of all time."  Yeah, well, so's Hootie's Cracked Rear View and Boston's self-titled album, and I'd rather roll in broken glass than listen to either of those over-produced schlock-fests, thank you very much.  So let's not judge it by its company, shall we?  Let's talk about the music and the people behind it.
Off and on since 1975, Fleetwood Mac has been guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, a genius/mad scientist of epic proportions who can take seemingly disparate elements like Celtic folk, hard rock, and Beach Boys-like harmonies and combine them to create something that sounds natural and electrifying.  But he's not the whole picture.  The band also had the not-so-secret weapons of Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks, who were themselves experts at crafting solid songs, along with the crack rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, proving Aristotle's point about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.  (Yeah, I just name-checked a Greek philosopher.  I promise I won't do it again.)  No doubt the whole intrigue surrounding the album--the highly publicized breakups, the infighting, the schtupping, the off-the-charts cocaine consumption--probably influenced the public to go buy the record en masse and scrutinize every line of the lyrics, looking for "the Walrus was Paul" kind of insights.  But, ultimately, it's a well-crafted pop/rock album with great songwriting (i.e. no filler), honest emotion, great performances, and production that's quite professional without sounding too slick or too stuck in its era.
One of the keystones of the album is definitely "Go Your Own Way."  It's a somewhat rare instance of a guy (Buckingham) telling a girl (Nicks) that shacking up isn't enough for him, and she should move on if she's not ready for something deeper.   (In the demo of the song, it's even clearer that he's addressing Nicks.  The original lyric in the chorus went: You can go your own way / You can roll like thunder--a direct reference to Nicks's song "Dreams," which is also about their rocky relationship: Thunder only happens when it's raining.)
The song works not only because of Buckingham's jilted-lover delivery and Christine McVie and Nicks's note-perfect backing harmonies, but because of the sheer layers of instrumentation: the bright, syncopated acoustic overdubs set against the throbbing 16th notes from the angry-sounding electric, John McVie's perfectly-placed thumps of bass, and Fleetwood's almost-tribal drumming, which perfectly cribs the tom-tom rhythm pattern from "Street Fighting Man."  
Last but not least, Buckingham's guitar solo during the last minute of the song may not be one of the more ostentatious displays of axemania, but it is one of the most expressive and effective "f-you's" ever recorded.