"Hold Me" (Fleetwood Mac)

When it comes to Fleetwood Mac, I don't normally go for Christine McVie's songs.  If you've been reading any of my blog entries for a substantial amount of time, you'll know that I'm a bigger fan of Lindsey Buckingham and (to a lesser degree) Stevie Nicks.  McVie's tracks tend to be too wan and toothless for my taste.  (Give me the pulsing weirdness of "What Makes You Think You're the One" or the lush dreaminess of "Sara" any day over the poppy-yet-plodding "Little Lies.")
But the song "Hold Me" from 1982's Mirage is my one McVie exception.  Its crisp, New Wave vibe—which owes a lot to Lindsey Buckingham's arranging/producing—always felt a little more like Talking Heads or Pretenders to me than Fleetwood Mac.  In fact, for many years, I didn't realize the song was a Fleetwood Mac tune until my parents bought the band's 1988 Greatest Hits album.  (Side 1, track 4.)
From what I've read over the years, McVie co-wrote the song with British musician Robbie Patton about her fling with the late Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys.  Which sheds light on the arrangement of the song, particularly its distinctive chorus: the harmonized call-and-response vocals singing Hold me (hold me) hold me (hold me) bear a striking resemblance to The Beach Boys' sunny, multi-layered harmonies.  What's more, those oddly compressed Come on and's (which sound like they were recorded in a shipping container) kind of bring to mind Mike Love's bow-bow-bow-bow accent vocals on the chorus of "Help Me Rhonda."  
But if there's one thing that makes this song for me it's Buckingham's guitar.  It takes on the unlikely role of percussion instrument, sounding almost like a cow bell for most of the track, until he launches into his simple-but-effective guitar solo, which wails with just a tinge of Eastern flair.