Fleetwood Mac and the filthiest song of 1977

A little preamble before we get to the main course

Kia ora and welcome to my subscribers (and a casual "s'up?" to those of you just finding your way here through the twists and turns of the interwebs).

This is now my fourth post on this platform (if you don't count the first one which is just a generic message that I didn't even realise was there to start with) and I feel I should apologise for a certain lack of cohesiveness. Every week or so Ghost sends me helpful emails encouraging me to create engaging content and offers very reasonable suggestions about "defining your brand" so that you can "build an audience" and while that is definitely good advice I think I know myself well enough to be able to say that without a doubt my "brand" is going to be "Random Shit That's Been Knocking Around In My Head For An Unspecified Period of Time And That I Just Puked Out Onto a Keyboard".

I feel I should apologise, but I won't. If doing Blog Idle for seven years taught me anything* it's that whatever I feel like writing about that day is probably the best thing to write about that day.

So in that spirit, here's a weird thing I've been thinking about...

So get this, Fleetwood Mac's... quite good?

This is, admittedly, an oddly uncontroversial thing to say but let me set the scene for you.

I was born in the mid-1970s and so my earliest memories are from the late 1970s. As I recall, it was a time that was very, very, brown**. Or sometimes orange. Ochre. Burnt umber. It really ranged all the way from buff to taupe. The visual backdrop to my preschool life was basically a miasma of earth tones and cigarette staining.

Similarly the aural landscape had it's own particular flavour. Dad favoured Bob Marley but if I think of my childhood having a soundtrack Fleetwood Mac would have featured heavily, also too, The Eagles. This wasn't music that I sought out, mind you. It was just sort of there the same way our brown polyester couch cushions were there resting in the faux chestnut couch frame. I would no sooner have stopped to consider the artistic merit of these songs than I would the artistic merit of our living room wallpaper (which is fortunate given the period and budget in which our home was built - it was hideous).

Sure, later on I became aware that these songs were from albums made by bands who were famous and so on but by then familiarity had already been having it off and producing lots of contempt babies. I'd had my fill of Fleetwood Mac by the time I started primary school so felt no need to go back to it as an adult.

Until last year I was watching an episode of a TV show that used a cover of "Go your own way" in the last scene and over the end credits. And probably because it wasn't a version I'd heard before the opening lyric "Loving you isn't the right thing to do" really stood out to me as a ballsy as fuck way to start a song. So, on a whim I downloaded Rumours and actually listened to it for the first time.

I was like those young guys listening to In the air tonight for the first time but like, if they'd actually already heard the song a million times before.

Imagine that video is me, during Go your own way, saying "Damn, Mick Fleetwood, these drums are TIGHT!"

The harmonies! The rhythm section! HOLY SHIT.

So for the first time in my life I actually listened to the Rumours album in totality and became borderline obsessed with it and this is how we get to the point where I reveal my highly unqualified reckons about the lyrical content of the absolute smut-show that is "You make loving fun".

You make loving fun: A close reading

I am fully aware that there's very little that's new that can be said about the ninth best selling album of all time that's been out for... [checks notes] 46 years. But I do wonder if anyone has ever really unpacked the lyrical content of "You make loving fun"^ in quite the way I'm about to (but just in case, it's not plagiarism if I never bothered to look up and see if anyone had done it first, it's just sloppy research).

Because folks, this song is dirty. Like Christina Aguilera in the early 2000s, dirrrrrty. This song just drank a bottle of reasonably priced chardonnay, watched Legend of Tarzan, and cannot wait for the mister to get home, if you get my drift. And look, we live in an era of WAP, so maybe our tolerances for filth are a little higher now than they were in 1977. I know mine are (because I was 3 in 1977 but let's not make it weird).

Because "You make loving fun" is such a breezy, sun-filled kind of song and nobody overtly mentions any genitalia it maybe flies under the radar a little for modern audiences. It's like how for years I never knew what Golden brown by The Stranglers was about until I heard a member of the band on the radio very archly pronounce that the song was about "toast". Turns out, it's about heroin. But because the song has such a dreamy, almost sweet quality to it, I never considered that it might not be about, I dunno... tanning?

But back to Fleetwood Mac and their song full of smutty sex-talk. Below, I helpfully provide an undeniably accurate interpretation of the lyrics.

(With apologies to my mother who made the grave mistake of subscribing to this newsletter)

Sweet wonderful you
[I'm feeling very warmly towards you and I'm about to explain why]
You make me happy with the things you do
[Those things you do. You know the ones]
Oh, can it be so?
[No gonna lie. I have had nothing but crap sex up to now]
This feeling follows me wherever I go
[But I am basically horny all the time now. LOL]
I never did believe in miracles
[Orgasms, I mean orgasms]
But I've a feeling it's time to try
[I'm a woman and I have NEEDS]
I never did believe in the ways of magic
[You're a motherfucking sex wizard]
But I'm beginning to wonder why
[Why oh why have all my other lovers been so shit?]
I never did believe in miracles
[If the Catholic church gave sainthoods for sex miracles you'd get one]
But I've a feeling it's time to try
[Anything you wanna try. I'm into it]
I never did believe in the ways of magic
[SEX WIZARD ME, BABY]
But I'm beginning to wonder why
[I now understand what all those articles in Cosmopolitan magazine were banging on about]
Don't, don't break the spell
[Shhhh, less talking, more fucking]
It would be different and you know it will
[Threesome?]
You, you make loving fun
[Sex, that famously un-fun activity]
And I don't have to tell you but you're the only one
[Why would I fuck anyone else when you're so good at it?]
You make loving fun
[It was genuinely quite underwhelming before]
(It's all I wanna do)
[It's all I wanna do]
You make loving fun
[I used to lie back and think of England]
(It's all I wanna do)
[It's all I wanna do]
You make loving fun
[Nothing but a long line of dud roots up to now]
(It's all I wanna do)
[It's all I wanna do]
You make loving fun
[It was like doing taxes before]
(It's all I wanna do)
[It's all I wanna do]

So I hope that clears that up?

I haven't bothered to look up who in Fleetwood Mac was banging/divorcing whom when this song was written because that would take the fun out of just fully committing to the idea that this is the story of a woman finally, properly getting her rocks off after many years of very mediocre sex. I'm so (belatedly) happy for her.

And while there's a possibility that my interpretation might not be 100% correct, there's a school of thought that says that no interpretation of art is wrong - it is whatever you see in it. And I choose to see a woman having her needs met. Repeatedly. In every room in the house. And probably on the patio as well.

Thanks, Fleetwood Mac. So glad I gave you a listen rather than just hearing you for my whole life.

*Don't be female on the Internet, Don't be Māori on the Internet, Don't read the comments (after about 2012).

**Did you know there's a wikipedia page just about all the different shades of brown?

^Not enough to have looked it up, because that would have ruined this.