(Credits: Far Out / LastFM)
Sun 26 October 2025 14:38, UK
She may not take the headlines like Stevie Nicks, grab the guitar licks like Lindsey Buckingham or run the band like Mick Fleetwood, but the late Christine McVie was a crucial component to the success of Fleetwood Mac despite not being a founding member of the group.
In fact, when you take the time to inspect her contribution to the canon of the group’s best songs, some of the most successful ditties can be found to have McVie’s signature under the writing credits. She wasn’t quite prolific, but she had a knack for writing classic tunes that will live for decades.
The band have gone through a comic strip of revolving characters as bandmates. Peter Greene, Bob Welch, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mike Campbell, and Neil Finn, plus lesser-known talents like Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan, Billy Burnett, and Rick Vito are all just members who have picked up the guitar or the mic for the group. Add to those names, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, two of the group’s original members, are you have a serious list of musical talent. But through all the changeovers, there’s still only been a sole keyboard player in the band’s entire story: Christine McVie.
She contributed immensely to their unique sound, crafting some of their most beloved tracks, but additionally, McVie was a peacekeeper who was integral in keeping band dynamics harmonious. In fact, there is a good claim to suggest that she might be one of the most underrated songwriters of her generation.
With different songwriting approaches, artists can often spend countless hours over months trying to complete a song in an attempt to strive for perfection. Alternatively, they can also stumble upon a piece of musical gold from nowhere, and in the case of McVie, the song which many recognise as her magnum opus was inexplicable.
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
McVie consistently wore her heart on her sleeve with her lyrics, which dealt with the trials and tribulations of her life. Whether this was dealing with her divorce from John McVie on ‘Don’t Stop’ or paying tribute to her bandmate Mick Fleetwood on ‘Oh Daddy’, McVie was always best equipped at saying how she felt through song.
However, during a conversation with The Guardian in 2022, McVie explained why her proudest moment as a songwriter came on the Rumours track ‘Songbird’. It was a miraculous piece of music which spilt straight out when she least expected it, and before she realised, the track was complete.
The song arrived at McVie in the middle of the night while she was in bed and led her to have a sleepless night. As this event occurred before the invention of the iPhone, the musician refused to close her eyes because she was frightened of losing the melody and structure, which was a short-term sacrifice she was willing to pay for ‘Songbird’.
When asked about the song she’s most proud of writing, McVie told The Guardian in 2022: “I’ve got to say ‘Songbird’. I couldn’t sleep, started to get a song rolling around in my head and I wrote it in half an hour. ‘For you there’d be no more crying …’ It’s sort of like a little prayer for everybody. We went into Zellerbach Hall studios [In Berkeley, California], they got me a bunch of red roses and I sang it alone on the stage.”
McVie avoids being too sloppy and instead nails the juxtaposing feeling of the loneliness of love. It’s another moment in which we get to see behind the curtain of Fleetwood Mac. It not only provides McVie with one of the most crystalline moments on the entire album, as she speaks of the sacrifice of true love, but it also unites the group. The songwriter often notes this song as the track that kept the entire band together.
In an earlier discussion with the same publication in 2016, she said of the song: “That was a strange little baby, that one. I woke up in the middle of the night and the song just came into my head. I got out of bed, played it on the little piano I have in my room, and sang it with no tape recorder. I sang it from beginning to end: everything. I can’t tell you quite how I felt; it was as if I’d been visited – it was a very spiritual thing.”
McVie continued: “I was frightened to play it again in case I’d forgotten it. I called a producer first thing the next day and said, ‘I’ve got to put this song down right now.’ I played it nervously, but I remembered it. Everyone just sat there and stared at me. I think they were all smoking opium or something in the control room. I’ve never had that happen to me since. Just the one visitation. It’s weird.”
There is no explanation for the creation of ‘Songbird’, and McVie could never explain what caused her to wake from bed to reach for the piano. However, that instinctive decision proved to be a career-defining moment for the late singer-songwriter.
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