"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.

"What Makes You Think You're the One" (Fleetwood Mac)

I like Lindsey Buckingham best when he has the forum and freedom to be as weird and experimental as he wants to be.  Sure, it takes skill and talent to write/produce a pop song; but it takes guts to push your music so far from center that it teeters on the brink of madness.
Although his more recent solo albums thoroughly showcase his experimental side (1997's Under the Skin remains a personal favorite of mine), Fleetwood Mac's Tusk (1979) probably was the first inkling that he was more than just Stevie Nicks's arranger.  Every one of his tracks on the album have this hyperactive, New Wave-y urgency that signal discontentment with being a "soft rock" star.
A good example is the track "What Makes You Think You're the One."  Not unlike the acerbic "Go Your Own Way," it's a song about Buckingham's strange and complicated relationship with Nicks.  Only this time around, he's not willing to give her his world.  In fact, he's saying that he's tired of having to prop her up, musically and emotionally.
Not only does Buckingham sound fantastically unhinged, singing like a madman over his own piano and guitar accompaniment, but Mick Fleetwood beats his drums like they insulted his mother.  It's so primal and anti-pop that you might be tempted to check the album cover to make sure you're actually listening to Fleetwood Mac.  (Or, better yet, it's a reminder that Buckingham and the Mac are more than just the sum of their Top 40 hits.)

"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.

"Sara" (Fleetwood Mac)

The entire Tusk album, Fleetwood Mac's 1979 follow up to the bajillion unit-selling Rumours (1977), is an interesting affair.  There's very little middle ground on the record (or maybe I should say "middle of the road"), and a definite concerted effort to avoid typical pop song structure.  
When you listen to Tusk, you don't go looking for radio-ready sing-along choruses à la "Don't Stop" or "Go Your Own Way," because they simply aren't there.  More or less, you have Lindsey Buckingham's jittery, coke-fueled forays into rockabilly-tinged New Wave sharing living space with Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie's watercolor balladry.  Sometimes the eclecticism works; other times it sounds like three different albums spun through a Cuisinart--particularly by the time you reach the end of disc two.
But the album is held together by pivotal moments like Nicks's "Sara."  
Like many of the other songs on the album, Nicks throws the "verse / chorus / verse" formula out the window on "Sara."  Instead, there's a loose web of verses and bridges, held together by her poetic lyrics and these otherworldly stacks of piano chords and acoustic guitar.  
(In fact, whereas everyone else on the web wants to dissect the hell out of her lyrics and figure out what/whom the song is about, I want to delve into the music and production instead.)  
The arrangement on this song is genius: there are Christine McVie's dueling pianos (both a little tinny and ever-so-slightly out of tune), split evenly between the speakers with Buckingham's copious guitar overdubs--which are in tune, also split between the two speakers.  The effect is that, one moment, chords are ricocheting off one another between your speakers and then they're melding together in the middle like a single instrument the next.  
Anchoring the whole thing is John McVie's steady, pulsing bass and Mick Fleetwood's unfaltering heartbeat rhythm--which he performs with brushes for God's sake!  
But my favorite part of all is the multi-tracked ooh backing vocals; they sneakily drift in like a fine mist, and then there are suddenly ten Stevies, Christines, and Lindseys, angelically hovering above the track.   I remember literally curling up next to the floor speakers of my parents' stereo when I was a kid and listening to those oohs and feeling like it was a warm blanket surrounding me.  It was (and is) one of those songs that I wished went on for hours and not mere minutes.